Run at the New Diorama Theatre, NW1

reviewed for The Times, 17th March 2016

Image Credit: Guy Saunders  Sourced: Engineer Theatre

Each summer, Oxford and Cambridge (and a few others) disgorge a few thousand of their most worldly, conventionally competitive young students into the City of London’s gruelling subculture of banking internships. There’s pressure to work late and party later; the prize for surviving ten weeks of exploitation is a permanent job offer and, for some, the life-changing promise of financial security. Yet the costs can be high.

With Run, Engineer Theatre has devised a tale of four overworked interns to look at this issue. If that could seem like a niche concern this young company do well to keep their focus on a subtle interplay of human relationships.

It’s good on class, too. On day one, worthy Caroline and Tim, children of a vicar and a teacher respectively, win our sympathies, all ill at ease and out of place. Yet it’s cocksure public school boy Lawrence (a consummate performance from Al Jarrett) who cracks first, years of keeping up appearances — in a Savile Row suit — finally taking their toll.

And it’s not just Lawrence. Each of these overconfident, insecure youngsters is playing dress-up, from bulimic Bosnian Ana in her killer heels to Tim, borrowing his father’s ill-fitting suit. Caroline (an endearing Charlotte Watson) is a disillusioned, doubting evangelical Christian, looking for a new role to play — when she’s not phoning her anxious dad or popping flatmate Lawrence’s Modafinil.

If the brief debate on banking ethics feels naive, Run is salvaged by the depth and sympathy each of the quartet brings to the elliptic, elegant narrative. With a ponderous soundscape by Dominic Kennedy, it’s simple but effective.