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Manhunt: A complex study of the life and death of Raoul Moat
With a superb testosterone-saturated central performance, this drama from Robert Icke at the Royal Court is gripping and sobering
Fresh from deserved success at the Oliviers for his impeccable Oedipus, director Robert Icke gives us another gripping and visceral drama, albeit one that is rooted in reality: the story of Raoul Moat.
The Newcastle bouncer’s violent rampage after being released from prison in July 2010 sparked the biggest manhunt in UK history: he shot his ex-partner, killed her new lover, and shot and blinded a traffic police officer (who later took his own life).
Moat turned his gun on himself during a stand-off with police, after going on the run for nearly a week. Given a slew of books and the recent ITV miniseries, Manhunt might seem like re-cycling fairly old news. And with troubled, nay ‘toxic’, masculinity already very much in the spotlight – what with Adolescence and James Graham’s Punch (which depicts the fallout from a mindless act of violence) – it might be thought Icke is a touch behind-hand in stirring necessary debate.
But Icke’s manifest argument – that men are often perceived as scarily problematic these days and that Moat’s extreme case reflects a more generalised fracture – persuasively positions this hate figure as an overlooked harbinger of where we are now, when a troubling swathe of the male population seems lost, alienated and angry.
Icke includes David Cameron’s remarks that Moat didn’t deserve sympathy (his motivating hatred of the police perversely drew admirers). It’s a difficult tight-rope act, the need to avoid sensationalising the events an imperative. The writer-director should have given more time to his ex-partner, Samantha Stobbart (Sally Messham), and the first victim, Chris Brown (Leo James). There is, though, a harrowing section, heard in darkness, that relays the experience of the traffic officer, David Rathband. And overall, Icke displays a sober focus on relaying how things span out of control.
With constituent bits of back-story presented as though Raoul survived to face the music in court (more of a psycho-dramatic conceit than a judicial procedural), the jigsaw-pieces of a damaged life are slotted together: an abusive childhood, with consequent unregulated emotion, a key factor. Even if the marshalling of all this risks seeming cursory, Samuel Edward-Cook’s superb central performance feels complete in its testosterone-saturated way.
First seen prowling like a caged animal, every move tracked by overhead CCTV, the actor has the cheekbones and bald-pated body-built physique to denote hard-man menace, abetted by a volatile stare. But alongside the brute force sits complexity: a vicious yank of Messham’s head turns into a coercive caress. And the need to salvage a broken life – to prove protector not destroyer, family-man not abject failure – hits home in the climax, involving a tender imagined encounter with a tragicomically disarrayed Paul Gascoigne (the footballer famously turned up during the standoff between Moat and police) and jolting redemptive kindness from a police negotiator. We see agony etched on Moat’s face as he digs the gun into his own throat.
More could surely have been made theatrically of the resource-draining manhunt, and attendant national hysteria, itself. But while this isn’t in the same league as Oedipus, it amply justifies main-stage attention, and deserves to tour, too.
Until May 3. Tickets: royalcourttheatre.com