Mood Music
The Old Vic. May 3, 2018
A new play by Joe Penhall. One about the music business. One that examines men vs women, experience vs talent, creativity vs commercialism, authenticity vs money, youth vs age.
The artist and the producer are at war. They are both seeing therapists to help them figure it out and start making more money for the record company.
They make music together and one song is making lots of money and winning lots of awards. But there is a problem: she thinks the song is hers/he thinks the song is his.
The structure of the play is VERY clever. It layers each conversation onto the next, Therapy conversations intertwine, lawyers arguments overlay, all characters are on the stage at the same time in different times and spaces. Loved that.
The therapy sessions also allow us to discover who our two main protagonists are. He’s a narcissist power-mad, control freak record producer and she’s an eager, talented idealistic singer-songwriter.
This could sound stereotyped but it doesn’t feel like that as around the two main characters we have different dimensions: therapists looking for the truth and lawyers looking for theirs.
It’s fascinating and funny and feels horribly real. You can completely imagine a bullying music industry to be this suffocating; crushing hopes, dreams and talent that doesn’t play the game.
I imagine it’s like any bullying industry — a few are listed — if you don’t flatter the generation before yours, you’re likely to get crushed.
Good news is this is bitingly funny and cutting. Ben Chaplin plays Bernard (was that name chosen to be the most un Simon Cowell like name they could think of?) with no morals, no principles and an astonising self-belief and delusion.
The rest of the cast are pretty great too — the innocence of youth shines from the face of Seána Kerslake, and Neil Stuke is having a ball as Bernard’s lawyer.
4/5 A play for the #metoo world.
