Waiting for Hate Mail by Mark Akrill. Seven Dials Playhouse, Tower Street, London to 20 January 2024.

3***: William Russell.

“A tale of love and hate mail and betrayal dazzlingly told.”

Nick Morrison-Baker gives a no holds barred performance in this monologue with voices in his head spoken by other actors presumably recorded so some amazing work is going on between Baker and back stage so that things spoken and “heard” coincide. It is 90 minutes long so Morrison-Baker is to be commended. Joe is waiting at an airport for the arrival of a son by a former partner Celeste who left him years before to live in Uganda. He has never met the boy and the flight is delayed. Joe waits and waits and gets disoriented by his plight and the difficulty of finding out what has happened to the young man, disorientation not helped by some threatening calls on his mobile phone and his own memories of his relationship as drama tutor with his students and his betrayal of Celeste and his realisation that the boy may have got off the plane in Rwanda and he is a Tutsi and this is the time of the genocide. It all gets very confusing although there is what appears to be a happy ending. Morrison-Baker performs on an empty stage in front of a video screen on which scenes from the airport are projected and the people he hears are performed by voice over artists we also hear. It works well but maybe Joe’s story could have been told with more clarity. However that is not to take away from the skill with which Nick Morrison-Baker tells it.

Cast

Nick Morrison-Baker – Joe Brewer.

Voice Over artists

Marcia Mantock – Celeste Kameya.

Judith Pollard - Sarah & Third Woman.

Melanie Carss – Public Announcer & Second Woman.

Phoebe White – Voice & Fo8rth Woman.

Amelia Mazurek – Voice & First Woman

Robert Nicholas – Fascist & Voice.

Mark Akrill – Joe’s Father.

And

Michael Ajoku – Daniel Kameya.

Creatives

Director – Mark Akrill.

Designer – Judith Pollard.

Choreographer – Rebecca Sachdev

Lighting Designer – Seb Blaber.

Sound Designer – Jan –Luca Forbicia.

Voice Recordings – Norman Goodman.