By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ***1/2

WHEN? Saturday 29 March, opens 8 April and runs through 3 May 2025 RUNTIME: 110 minutes (without interval)

What would former England football star Gazza have said to Raoul Moat, the subject of the UK’s largest manhunt, had police let him access the 2010 stand-off?

• Read on for reasons including how blackout is used well to explain the complicated aftermath of a shooting

It’s perhaps the most interesting aspect of this play by Olivier Award-winning director Robert Icke (Oedipus, Wyndham’s Theatre) but it is imagined because although Paul Gascoigne had mistaken Moat for a friend and wanted to help they never had a conversation while police negotiated with him in Rothbury, Northumbria.

Trevor Fox plays an imagined Gazza who is able to bring some insight into the very in-vogue subject of male rage and channelling anguish and frustration into football – in Moat’s case it was bodybuilding – without raising a hand and asking for mental health help.

It’s subject matter currently better explored in Jack Thorne’s (The End Of History, Royal Court) outstanding Netflix series Adolescence and onstage in James Graham’s Punch (Young Vic) and Dear England (National Theatre).

But 1 of our problems with Manhunt is that there is so much unexpected real-life plot to explain that the examination of why Moat shot 3 people is less well explored.

Moat had a grudge against the police because he thought the mother of his child was seeing a policeman and the complicated aftermath of the shooting of PC David Rathband in blackout is handled especially well.

Icke has previously won Oliviers for best director for Oresteia (Almeida 2016) and best new play for The Doctor (Almeida, 2020) and loves to use times and dates to establish scenes and so it is again here as the detail of the 6-day manhunt is explained.

Samuel Edward-Cook plays Moat and as we enter the theatre he appears, working out, and almost caged behind a partition between auditorium and stage which establishes both that he has been imprisoned but also that he poses an almost animalistic threat.

Writer/director Icke is perhaps best known for his modern adaptations of classic texts and we weren’t quite sure why he had chosen this story and especially this protagonist to focus on other than its detail seems so fantastical despite it actually happening.

This was a preview and it might change before its opening but we thought it well-suited to its film-like 110 minutes without break runtime and we can see it transferring into the West End as its Olivier Award-nominated predessor Giant has done to much acclaim.

But if you’re looking for an in-depth study of male rage and its causes Adolescence is presented more simply and is more devastating as a result and there are better plays running in London treading similar if not quite the same ground to better effect.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Royal Court Theatre Tickets
• Have you seen a Robert Icke show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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