Review: fast-paced drama at Warwick Arts Centre fails to engage

The Secret Agent is an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novel about anarchist terrorists in late Victorian London.

The story features a host of seedy low-lifes, shadily backed by governments of the day who cynically manipulate their idealistic pawns to commit an act of outrageous violence that each side hopes will engage and stir an otherwise apathetic public. At the heart of it is a story of domestic love, as a mother tries to support her disabled brother, who in the end becomes the unwitting instrument of terror.

If the politics of the day sound familiar, they are meant to. But while the novel explores the desperation felt by many at the bottom of the Victorian pile, the play turns it into something of a farce.

Not that comedy cannot be effective in making a serious political point. But while the pace is fast, and the shifts from melodrama to comedy to music hall to dance and surrealism are accomplished with the ease of a troupe of skilled and seasoned performers, somehow it doesn’t quite engage on an emotional level. Perhaps it is the very degree of stylisation that lets it down, as when, for example, the heroine of the story, Winnie Verloc, learns that her poor abused brother has been blown to smithereens by the bungling acts of her husband.

What should have been a heartbreaking moment of grief and revelation is turned into a game of hide and seek.

The irony of this and other moments of cartoonish fun is well intentioned, but for me didn’t quite come off.

Nick Le Mesurier