Complicité opens with a man handcuffed to a tree in a park in the middle of London having phone sex.
Simon, played with hapless wonder by Alex Westbook, is a bespectacled primary school teacher in a v-necked jersey who decided to have himself manacled to a tree to just stop oil or stop the war or whatever. Now his friends have deserted him with nothing left but activist paraphernalia and the detritus of partying.
Onto this scene comes Benoit, a suave French oil engineer in a suit and a white shirt played with suitable sang-froid by Victor Ciri. He is drunk and has been wandering the streets for days, having broken up with his fiancé.
This unlikely pair set up a relationship based on mutual antagonism. Benoit’s opinion is that you should live life to the full, all we are is higher primates, soon we will all be dead anyway. Simon, less convincingly, wants to save the planet. ‘We are in the middle of the sixth mass extinction,’ he says, but the only solution he offers is being tied to a tree which you don’t have to be a cynical Gaul to consider is inadequate to the point of comedy.
They continue with insults, mock fights and actual fights, playing out national stereotypes as Benoit mock’s Simon’s performative pragmatism and he in turn sneers at the Frenchman’s vapid philosophy. They throw the names Nietzsche and Russell at each other but don’t seem to know much about either of them.
The running joke of the production is the attachment these very different men have for their mobile phones. Even when nuclear annihilation threatens, they are arguing over who gets the phone with the appropriate app for an escape which is not feasible.
There was a full house with many young people, doubtless many eco-friendly folk for whom the play hit a nerve. Sadly, the script rather misses the mark, but the two protagonists kept the play pacy and afloat.
We are certainly in a tradition of Dr Strangelove of comedy about nuclear warfare. This play was grasping after meaning but for all the rough and tumble on the way, never seemed to get there.
Venue: Brockley Studio Theatre
Playwright: Finn Lanchester
Cast: Victor Ciri, Alex Westbrook
Duration: 65 minutes
Until: 31 October 2026