Mad House
Ambassadors Theatre | ★★★✩✩

Theresa Rebeck’s play about a dysfunctional American family is like watching a fireworks display.

Its starry cast is led by Bill Pullman and Stranger Things actor David Harbour and the evening is strewn with one-liners. Yet for all its ability to hold attention it leads to anti-climax and a nagging guilt that time has been spent with little to show for it.

The promising first act which is set in the unkempt kitchen of a house in rural Pennsylvania (nicely realised by Frankie Bradshaw’s detailed design) works very well as a study of a soured father/son relationship. Harbour is especially good as the son Michael conveying a coiled suppression of temper whenever his father succeeds in goading him.

Imagine a darker version of The Odd Couple, only with the duo trapped in each other’s company. Daniel is too ill and Michael has nowhere to go having just spent nearly a year in a psychiatric hospital. (He was self-sectioned after a breakdown while working for an oil corporation, we later learn.)

The dynamic changes with arrival of Caribbean-born hospice nurse Lilian (affectingly played by Akiya Henry) who becomes a reluctant referee, but whose sympathies lean towards Michael. The possibility of romantic connection is in the air and a kind of equilibrium is established.

But when Michael’s siblings Pam and Ned (Sinéad Matthews and Stephen Wight) arrive with plans to snaffle the inheritance this delicate balance is replaced by a plot of relative crudeness.

Pam is especially thinly drawn (though well played by Matthews) as the monstrous, merciless money-grabber willing to sacrifice her vulnerable brother on the altar of getting a bigger cut.

Still, Moritz von Stuelpnagel’s production skilfully treads the line between pathos and comedy. And in the scene where Michael returns to the house with two “hookers” from the local bar, the show takes a pleasingly chaotic and dangerous turn too.

Yet the audience’s gathering sense that there is little to be learned here about how we deal with death and family history is increasingly vindicated.

Perhaps the analogy of a firework display followed by anti-climax is a little harsh. It is certainly no damp squib. But if you have ever waded into the sea to find that after a while the waters get shallower, you’ll know how this show feels.