MY ZINC BED

By Diana Simmonds

October 23 2015

MY ZINC BED, Ensemble Theatre, to 22 November 2015. Photography by Clare Hawley. Above: Sam O’Sullivan and Sean Taylor; right: Danielle Carter and Sean Taylor.

Whatever you think this 2000 play by David Hare is about (and there are a number of possibilities) an exploration of power is surely one of its main themes. There is also addiction, faith, politics, love and betrayal – it’s a densely packed 95 minutes.

On a serenely abstract and cunningly lit set (Tobhiyah Stone Feller and Nicholas Higgins respectively) the focus is sharply on the three actors and the text that enmeshes them like a seine net of conflicting emotions and motives.

One-time Communist and now IT magnate Victor Quinn (Sean Taylor) reigns in his Regents Park mansion with a much younger wife Elsa (Danielle Carter) and a visitor: bemused journalist and poet Paul Peplow (Sam O’Sullivan). Victor is a charming, commanding figure who disarms Paul from the outset by knowing an unusual amount about him and understanding that Paul is a reluctant journo. 

Victor also knows Paul is a recovering alcoholic however, and his playfully Machiavellian response to that is disconcerting for the younger man, particularly when he is offered a job by the mogul who, of course, also knows he’s on his uppers. (Well he is a poet, stands to reason.)

Enter the gorgeous trophy wife Elsa and it turns out that Victor rescued her too: from a puddle of vomit and her own degradation on a bar room floor. Nothing coincides like coincidence and then we begin see Paul through Elsa’s eyes and it’s a trick of the light, some assured acting and definite physicality, but suddenly the somewhat drab hack is looking rather like Bradley Cooper. Trouble is surely brewing - but who is the brewmaster?

Director Mark Kilmurry has wisely dumped Elsa’s original Swedish ethnicity. It merely dangled another red surströmming  in front of an already dense text and as Danielle Carter more human than vamp (as written) in the director’s reading, she is able to maintain her position between the two men with clarity and credibility throughout.

The three performances are mesmerising individually and together. Sean Taylor is at once monstrously egotistical and at times frightening - and doesn't lose his grip on the other two (or the audience) for a moment. Yet the occasional vulnerability that flashes subtly to the surface keeps him on the flesh and blood side of the ledger and he is credible and never a caricature.

In a very different way, Sam O’Sullivan also delivers a powerfully direct yet understated performance. He is able to convey his weakness and less than stellar qualities while plausibly illustrating the other side of a man whose words and images enchant his boss and fatally attract Elsa.

My Zinc Bed  is an intimate and absorbing exploration of the insecurity of modern life: love and success are as illusory as each other and without the former and some old fashioned beliefs and convictions, we probably won’t enjoy the latter very long. Or something like that - go see for yourself and enjoy Sean Taylor, in particular, at the height of his abilities. (Idea: a revival of the David Hare/Howard Brenton media drama Pravda  with Taylor as Lambert Le Roux: dynamite.)