These days, it’s rare to find a theatre production that doesn’t attempt some kind of genre- or setting-bending flourish (Hamlet in a mental hospital, A Doll’s House in Colonial India, etc.). It’s therefore deeply refreshing to encounter a performance that fully succeeds in making you feel, without sounding like a cliché, as if you are quite literally in the room.
Drunk Baby Production’s staging of Jez Butterworth’s Mojo, performed in the upstairs room of a Victorian pub – the Prince Regent in Dulwich – uses the boozer’s creaking floorboards, faint smell of ale, and gently uneven lighting to create an environment that feels effortlessly authentic, as though you’ve been transported into the world of Butterworth’s Soho gangsters.
The audience lounges on plush sofas and mismatched armchairs, arranged amid a landscape of empty Campari bottles, half-eaten birthday cake and loose poker chips. It is a set that feels lived-in, as if it genuinely is the back room of their club, and as a result it immediately renders the audience complicit; witnesses and confidants to the drama that unfolds. The proximity adds a real sense of impending danger not only for the characters but, at moments, for you, as the danger ramps up in this mix between an Iannucci comedy and a Graham Greene novel, with a little splash of Tarantino. Each scene is punctuated by frenetic jazz drumming and strobing red lights, a design choice that mirrors the jittery pulse of a real Soho bar.
We open on a conversation between Potts (Jack Godwin) and Sweets (Rudi Rance), who are excitedly – and prematurely – celebrating a potential deal between their boss, Ezra (owner of the Atlantic Nightclub), and a local gangster that could make them rich. After a night of revelry with their other associate, the skittish Skinny Luke (Johnnie Davis), and Ezra’s bratty hot-headed son Baby (Ben Francis), they are informed by Ezra’s number two, Mickey (Seth Robinson), that their boss has in fact been murdered, and the rest of them could be next.
The black comedy of the original script is deftly handled. Moments such as the deadpan exchange “Are you sure he’s dead?” / “He’s in two bins” are delivered with impeccable timing. Potts and Sweets bounce off one another in rapid-fire bursts, their overlapping dialogue evoking two real 1950s wideboys you might overhear bantering in the street.
The troupe – who met at University College London – give no impression of being fledgling performers. Jack Godwin’s magnetically frantic Sidney Potts and Seth Robinson’s coolly coiled Mickey are the standout turns, but the entire ensemble delivers performances of surprising maturity and control, balancing the script’s absurdity with moments of unflinching emotional intensity.
The familiarity between the characters is one of the production’s great strengths. The in-jokes on Skinny Luke’s recycled anecdotes about his Uncle Tommy, for example, land precisely because the actors understand the rhythm of real friendship groups.
If the production falters, it is in the second act. The energy dips slightly, and the cluster of late-stage twists arrives in a way that can feel rushed and somewhat confusing. Yet this may be the script’s doing rather than the actors’, whose commitment never wavers.
Overall, the staging was flawless, the acting consistently compelling, and the atmosphere unlike anything offered by more conventional theatre spaces.
Featured image credit: Drunk Baby Productions
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