By Aline Mahrud

WORTH A LOOK?: **** RUNTIME: 70 minutes (without interval)

WHEN?: Monday 22 June, opens 30 June and runs through 15 August 2026

Meet troubled police officer Joe, played by Russell Tovey (Constellations, Vaudeville Theatre), who takes a series of 999 calls in this real-time thriller set in London.

• Read on for reasons including how this is the perfect setting for this real-time thriller to grip you by your collar and never let go

Joe’s job is to dispatch the emergency services needed to potential crime scenes and during The Guilty we also learn that he’s a father who misses his young daughter and doesn’t get on with his estranged wife.

It’s also the night before a hearing at which his professionalism is going to be called into question and there’s a journalist with his mobile phone number who wants to give this working class public servant the chance to tell his side of the story.

The Guilty is based on 2018 Danish film Den skyldige which was the country’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Academy Awards.

The best thing about this theatrical version is that Joe’s isolation on stage allows us to believe what a terrifically pressured job this can be but also, without co-workers around as we imagines happens in the UK, that he might allow himself to develop a bit of a God complex and act as judge and jury when he hears something he doesn’t like.

Tovey’s skilled at portraying a working class everyman who can both empathise with a caller who appears to have been abducted and is pretending to talk to her young daughter but also to go too far when his frustrations with actions he’s physically powerless to intervene in don’t fit with his warped sense of right and wrong.

Director Felix Barrett does a great job in ratcheting up the tension and the sounds of the phone calls we hear as Joe does are particularly eerie, sinister and annoyingly baffling in revealing exactly what is going on.

At its worst The Guilty could have been increasingly agitated man takes a series of a dozen or so calls over the course of 70 minutes but it’s to the credit of everyone involved that this drips with jeopardy and relatable horror.

If you’re wanting to take a picture of Tovey at the bows, the literature from the Donmar makes explicit that this isn’t allowed, an instruction reiterated before the show and policed on the evening we attended.

Tovey is an always watchable actor and we’ve particularly enjoyed some of his most recent acting choices including film Plainclothes and the Russell T Davies sci-fi TV drama The War Between The Land And The Sea.

It’s great to welcome back to the theatre and the Donmar is the perfect setting for this real-time horror to grip you by your collar and never let go.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Donmar Warehouse Tickets
• Have you seen a Russell Tovey show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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