Review: A Role To Die For (Marylebone Theatre)

Review by Sam Waite

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The most difficult choices in life are often made with a severe time crunch putting pressure on the decider. Do you want fries with that? Will you marry me? Is that cash or card to pay? Every so often, a powerful few must make a decision which will impact popular culture, the state of the arts, even the prevailing mood of Western society! And so the ambitious characters of Jordan Waller's A Role To Die For must wrestle with that weightiest of questions: Who will be the next James Bond?

Deborah, the daughter of the former Bond exec who left the bulk of his company to her, is preparing to announce her choice to take over the iconic character following Daniel Craig’s run. The problem, as she and cousin/co-producer Malcolm will soon learn, is that the perfect actor for the role has had a scandal involving “young women” implied to be quite a bit younger than his own 35 years. To the rescue comes Deborah’s son Quinn, branded online as a “mediocre nepo-baby” but with a recommendation in the form of Theo. The question becomes less, “Who should be the next Bond?” as it pivots to, “Will the world accept a Black 007?”

With little time for subtleties, Waller’s script has an immense amount of fun with the cutting stereotypes who populate his narrative. Malcolm is the bumbling but experienced producer whose own ethics need not apply, Deborah the calculating businesswoman who sees the world less in shades of grey and more in profit margins, and Quinn is the morally superior but thoroughly unimpressive intern who resents the idea of riding coattails all while striking up deals with his mother. By leaning into their most caricature-esque traits, Waller allows for the nuance to come later, and for the jokes to come thick and fast.

BBC star Tanya Franks is on top form as Deborah, as committed to the bit as she is unconcerned with forcing any likability into the role. Deborah is a ruthless, morally-stunted professional with no qualms about stabbing her own family in the back, and Franks finds the funny in every second of it. Her throwaway insults are cutting, her over-the-top reactions comedy gold, and her second-act scenes show just enough humanity for the themes of betrayal and lifelong servitude to fully hit. As cousin and co-producer Malcolm, Philip Bretherton does well as the ever-sighing, continually overruled party. The comedy of Malcolm’s character is in his blend of old-fashioned chauvinism and his being browbeaten from within his own family, and Bretherton finds the right notes of duplicity and doubtfulness to make the combination work.

Quinn, Deborah’s son, is played here by Harry Goodson-Bevan, whose English accent suggests that firmly Californian Deborah must have a British lover sometime in her past. Perhaps another sign of her devotion to the British institution of Bond, Quinn’s accent is jolting at first but easy to brush aside. Acting at times as somewhat of a straight-man (ironically, with his unseen boyfriend a vocal critic of the family business) to his mother and uncle’s brash, dominating presences. Proving himself to be a capable dramatic actor in act two as well as getting plenty of laughs, it is a shame that Goodson-Bevan’s role has comparatively little to do for so much of the first act, a spare part in discussions which could serve to embolden and brighten Quinn’s role.

In fairness, Waller’s brisk script, clocking in at barely two hours even with an interval, may well have suffered from the slowing down this expansion could entail. Director Derek Bond (what a coincidink!) matches this pace nicely, favouring keeping the gap between gags short over giving plot beats that extra moment to breathe. This is a strong choice for the broadness of much of the comedy, perhaps the only shortcoming of this approach from both Bond and Waller being that the final scenes have a weightier quality that doesn’t quite feel earned by the delightful farce that has preceded it. Then again, I’m a grouchy reviewer and this is a purposefully broad comedy skewering that classic target that is the entertainment industry, so more time spent making me laugh than think is hardly a criticism!

Rounding out the cast are the two hopefuls for the role of Bond – though only one appears on stage. Peter McPherson plays the pre-recorded role of Richard, via video/projection designer Matt Powell, the prototypical casting choice who is at once safely familiar and already has half the audience begging for a change of pace. Representing that potential change is Obioma Ugoala, a standout of the play’s second act as Theo, a largely ignored auditionee who Quinn has championed. With the pressure of more than half of the show having happened before he sets foot on stage, Ugoala blends beautifully into the existing dynamics and it’s easy to forget that he was barely a suggestion of a character before the interval came to an end. His stage presence is undeniable, and he capably navigates the established humour while bringing to life the nuance that this Black actor’s presence brings to the conversations being had.

With Cory Shipp’s attractive, rotatable set allowing us a clear vision of the world A Role To Die For’s characters inhabit, the immediate joy of the show is in laughing at all those classic Hollywood cliches we’ve come to know and love. Deborah deadpans a foul insult before slamming down the phone; Quinn cusses out his boyfriend via voice-note before softly telling him he’ll met him in an hour; words like “pronouns” and “woke” are hurled around with the joke being that Malcolm barely knows what he’s saying. Under the careful direction of Bond… Derek Bond, the joke is always firmly on our bigwig protagonists, and Waller is unafraid to write a leading character who is, ultimately, an anti-hero if not an outright villain.

I personally could have done without an interval, the pace and running time both being so swift that a continuous momentum would have been as welcome as a trip to the toilet. Still, if an interval is deemed necessary it is certainly in the right place to divide the narrative into two cohesive sections, and a brief pause to commit to memory some of the stronger jokes wasn’t at all unwelcome. While slightly uneven in its reaches for depth of emotion, A Role To Die For is so genuinely funny, and so easy to become invested in, that the finer points of a mother-son-uncle dynamic can happily wait for another day… or for another play.

A Role To Die For plays at Marylebone Theatre until August 30th

For tickets and information visit https://www.marylebonetheatre.com/productions/a-role-to-die-for

Photos by Steve Gregson