The Mouse House is one of those plays that you immediately want to listen again. It's packed full of ideas and hooks into topical concerns. I wanted to keep stopping the action, and debate with the characters. And that's got to be a good thing, right?
Mike, a bored IT geek on the wrong side of 40 who recites TS Eliot's "Hollow Men" to himself in the lav before heading into yet another PowerPointless meeting, is inspired by a Parisian stunt. In admiration of the group that secretly repaired the clock of the Pantheon in the French capital, Mike plots to mount a fireworks display from the chimneys of Battersea Power Station.
This Banksyan, plinthesque project is progressed at a series of meetings in All Bar One at Leicester Square. We're not told how Mike recruits his expert helpers - a pyrotechnics guru, and a construction guy who can get them into the site - but I'm guessing social media plays a part.
Mike's wife Kate, the incomparable Raquel Cassidy, is as bored and detached as him. They have no kids; they discuss a friend's bulimic daughter; they wonder about getting another dog... And they gently argue about whether they've just eaten fusilli or penne. The dialogue is impressively 2009, right down to one of the gang's pronouncements that "we've reached that point".
But why is Mike doing what he's doing? Mike himself is unsure. He wants to make an anonymous gesture, but then he decides that he should contact the media. Meanwhile, he's recording a long message into a Dictaphone, tracking the progress of the project and his interpretation of its meaning.
Given the (brief) mention of 9/11, and the confessional nature of Mike's audio recording, I couldn't help thinking of the London bombings of 2005. The play doesn't talk directly about physical terrorism, but perhaps the thought processes behind cultural terrorism are not so very different.
The play mentions actual dates: the fireworks are planned for the day I'm writing this review. Coincidentally, I rode on the train past Battersea Power Station yesterday and the area between the building and the river is covered with seats. (There's going to be a display of motorcyle stunts there. ) But somehow I believed the scene where Mike's team make a recce under cover of darkness (encountering no seats) more than the evidence of my own eyes.
This is a challenging play that dares to revisit Eliot's unreal city, and to ask how much progress we've made in bolstering the authenticity of our lives.
Mike ...... Adam Kotz
Kate ...... Raquel Cassidy
Steve ...... Nicholas Gleaves
Will ...... Giles Fagan
Mike's Colleague ...... Stephen Hogan.
Directed by Toby Swift and broadcast on Tuesday 11 August 2009 at 14:15 on BBC Radio 4.
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