Playwright Christopher Shinn is on to something here. He wants to identify the sickness within that leads people to be violent to one another. Or rather, his play does. Or should that be his main protagonist played by Ben Whishaw, an Elon Musk-like visionary who has been touched by God?
Because, more so than many a play that attempts to reflect the hell-in-a-handcart direction in which the world seems to be going, this one feels like a playwright’s heartfelt plea to think more deeply about that part of us that wants to hurt or kill someone else. It’s a plea expressed with a gently evangelical charm by Whishaw’s Luke, without which and whom Ian Rickson’s production might be intolerably preachy.
“Go where there is violence” is the message that Luke is convinced came from God. And so, accompanied by his PR executive, Sheila (Amanda Hale), he embarks on an odd odyssey of discovery that begins by visiting the parents of a Columbine-like killer who murdered many of his fellow pupils in the school canteen.
Such is the honesty and earnestness with which Luke attempts to learn from victims of violence, he unwittingly generates a following of disciples. The point seems to be to show the barriers that are put in the way of people trying to do good things.
The forces against include an internet company that exploits its workers; though it’s not entirely clear how the impulse to buy online contributes to the impulse to kill. And on a university campus, which Luke visits in the wake of a rape, aggressive political correctness — superbly embodied by Kevin Harvey’s creative writing professor — becomes a stick to beat Luke’s good intentions.
What’s missing here is an argument that links these forces. But Whishaw is mesmeric as a reluctant messiah.
