Review: Andrew Scott and David Dawson's performances bedazzle in The Dazzle, Found 111
30/12/2015
There are 71 steps up to the performance space in the former St Martin's School of Art on Charing Cross Road. The hubbub of students long since silenced, you climb a narrow staircase that winds around an inactive, caged, lift shaft leading you up and up until you are in room that feels like an attic.
The stage is small and cluttered, surrounded by a jumble of mismatched chairs and so appropriate for Richard Greenberg's New York-set play about two eccentric, hoarding brothers. You sit so close you feel like you've been 'collected' by them.
It is inspired by the story of two real brothers whose decomposing bodies were found in 1947 in their junk-crammed home. Andrew Scott plays Langley the skilled and pedantic musician who's artistic temperament is strangling his career and the brothers' source of income. David Dawson is Homer a 'retired' accountant tasked with looking after Langley by their mother and no less eccentric.
Into their world steps Millie (Joanna Vanderham) a rich woman who is trying to escape her family. Her 'ordinariness', as Langley sees it, is incongruous to the brothers' lack of it but she is also a character of contradictions, a potential saviour and potential victim.
The Dazzle is a life less ordinary laid bare with humour, tragedy and bite. A keenly imagined insight into the world of two brothers that is funny and poignant and you can catch it until January 30 at Found 111 on Charing Cross Road. It is two hours and 25 minutes without and interval and is unallocated seating.
RS/BW 6DS
Of course Mr W and Mr Scott have worked together both on stage in Cock and in Spectre and The Hour.