Timing’s essential. These days, celebrity careers are born and ruled by it. Drowning on Dry Land was fortuitous to premier at Scarborough in spring 2004 in the immediate wake of the news of David Beckham’s affair with Rebecca Loos. This real-life celebrity snafu and subsequent fallout matched rather neatly with the play, in which protagonist and media darling of the moment, Charlie Conrad (Christopher Coghill), is caught in flagrante with a clown hired for his son’s birthday party. The play has now resurfaced for a London run in the year that brings the regrettably landmark watershed of the demise of the Big Brother television series.
Our hero Charlie is famous for being inept at everything he turns his hand to, like some bastard brother to Midas. From the moment his knee popped at his one shot to be a middle-distance running champion, to his situation at the beginning of the play opening supermarkets and toppling pyramids of stacked cans, he has never been good at anything and the public love him for it.
They have warmed to his vapidity, his everyman charm, while he himself frets over falling apart completely should those around him desert and leave him to disappear not only into anonymity, but altogether. Or course, this is exactly what happens following his indecent romp with Mr. Chuckles, delightfully rendered into a twitchy number one fan of Charlie’s by Helen Mortimer.
Ayckbourn’s play scrutinizes the modern celebrity from every perceivable angle and while the premise should tire over two hours, it doesn’t, thanks largely to a sharp, crackling script brought to life by a tight cast. The play has ripened nicely since 2004 and the intimacy of Jermyn Street Theatre together with the play’s solitary setting in the shadow of a Victorian folly in Charlie’s garden evoke 2011 media saturation of celebrity coverage very well. These days, if it’s not tweeted, it’s Liked, or webcast, or disseminated through a thousand different micro-media and our celebrities can sometimes seem more like neighbours or old school friends, such is the triumph of social networking and 24-hour news coverage. In the same way, you just cannot escape Charlie’s torturous descent, as near, hot and flushed as he is at this venue.
Between Bez from the Happy Mondays and an Eastenders paedophile, Christopher Coghill is perhaps more accustomed to playing colourful and complex parts. In spite of this track record, he impresses as a wonderfully flat Charlie who matures into a genuinely pitiful and compelling presence as his ultimate failure dawns on him. Siobhan Hewlett is excellent as the young, successful television journalist, Gale Gilchrist, particularly in a breathtaking and energetic scene that leads into Charlie’s moment of madness. Hugo de Préscourt also deserves special mention for his teeth and spittle legal defence of Charlie, as hot-shot lawyer Mark Farrelly. Last, Les Dennis: himself no stranger to the ups and downs of life as a celebrated media figure, Les is perfect as Charlie’s agent Jason Ratcliffe and puts in a performance full of patient and knowing smiles as his client’s career enters free-fall.
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