Austrian sexual misconduct and game-playing

The Actors Company has two productions at the New Players Theatre and, although they have different casts and directors, they share the same flaws. Tom Stoppard's Undiscovered Country, an adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's Das Weite Land, like Trelawny Of The Wells (also in rep), wheels out a big cast. Most of the actors get their moment and, at a guess, their chance to land an agent. Too many of them fudge it.

Undiscovered Country is a probing look at the the sexual misconduct and game-playing behind the respectable facade of fin-de-siècle Austrian society. The drama revolves around the fraying marriage of adulterous Friedrich (John Mawson) and Genia Hofreiter (Julia Camron).

David Harris's production, played out amid garden furniture to the background thwack of tennis balls, lacks the lightness of touch to handle the play's darting perceptions, or to impart a sense of its characters' folly and nobility.

This comes across as a shallow play with deep pretensions, boiling down to the maxim that nobody can ever fully know anyone else's heart or motives. Mawson's distinguished but rigid acting has the charisma of an ironing board. Still, if a few of the performances make you yelp in pain, others make the evening bearable. Susannah Bourne, in the role of one of Friedrich's mistresses, smashes her one-liners right down the middle.

The Actors Company Rep Season 2007: Undiscovered Country
New Players Theatre
The Arches, Villiers Street, WC2N 6NG