Tangled web | 30 June 2016

Mike Bartlett’s curious blank-verse drama Charles III became an international hit. His new effort examines the cut-throat world of dark-web espionage. An American traitor named Andrew (Edward Snowden presumably) is hiding out in a Moscow hotel. Enter a flirty, giggling Irishwoman played by Caoilfhionn Dunne, who claims to be British and who teases Andrew over his betrayal of his homeland’s secrets. She evinces an interest in Oscar Wilde and the pair lock horns over footling minutiae. Andrew points out that Barbie dolls are called Sindy in the UK and this seems to demonstrate his familiarity with Britain. But he fails to spot the false cadences of her accent and he doesn’t query her use of the strange term ‘British Metropolitan Police’. And the name ‘Nick Leeson’ means nothing to him.

Their aimless and inconsistent conversation is mystifying. Are the errors intended as clues to a brilliant cat-and-mouse game or are they just the blunders of a scribbler past his deadline? The Irishwoman hints at a crush on Andrew but her invitations are aggressively farcical.