Ulster American, review: Woody Harrelson is the grisly epitome of mansplaining insufferability
A touch of Tinseltown has come to west London ahead of Christmas. Woody Harrelson, initially of Cheers renown, then much else besides, is back on stage for the first time in 18 years.
Apparently, he had a “particularly unsatisfying experience” appearing in The Night of the Iguana on Shaftesbury Avenue in 2005. So it’s almost an in-joke that he’s appearing in Ulster American, a dark comedy by David Ireland about a Hollywood actor who has signed up to be in a play in London that has all the makings of being a hideous car-crash from the off.
And that’s just one element of the meta amusement on offer here - because the character Harrelson, 62, is playing, an Oscar-winning A-lister called Jay, is the model of cosseted entitlement, hollow liberal piety and gormless egotism. There’s a simple delight as Harrelson, in billowing garish trousers and flowing scarf, swiftly makes himself at home chez his anxious English theatre director (Andy Serkis’s Leigh), limbering up as he pompously opines. He bull-charges into no-no topics, beginning with the N-word and moving on to a toxically glib poser about their ideal candidate for rape.
As with the comparable David Mamet satire, Speed-the-Plow, much entertainment value resides in the insiderly depiction of facile, cliché-spouting showbiz. And as with that play, there’s a pivotal, patronised female character - here, Louisa Harland’s swiftly incredulous Ruth. She’s the playwright in question - and upping the toe-curling aspect, and thematic stakes – her incredulity arises in large part because the super-ignorant Jay fails to grasp the distinction between Ireland and Northern Ireland. Once it finally dawns on him that his agreed role is that of a Protestant Unionist – British, therefore – he threatens to rip up the deal.
At its 2018 Edinburgh premiere, there was a sense of the play being boldly of the moment, addressing the UK-wide ramifications of the Brexit vote, and striking a chord amid the sea-change of MeToo. Updated to 2023, it has lost some of its currency. Still, Ireland’s baiting of our discomfort – we’re often torn between reflex laughter and nauseated outrage – is arguably even more daring today.
It will surely divide opinion and Jeremy Herrin’s production also invites complaints of over-statement – there’s a slight strain to some moments, now the play is set before a larger crowd. And yet, aside from a denouement that achieves that rare thing, shock-value, the evening offers the unmistakable pleasure that an actor of Harrelson’s stature has bothered to come over, and throw himself into a gleeful portrait of a visiting Yank as the grisly epitome of preening, mansplaining insufferability.
Until Jan 27. Tickets; ulsteramericanplay.com
