Solo performances that rely on the audience being totally focused on one character are often exceedingly hard to achieve, yet Locke, currently playing at Bats Theatre, about the plight of construction worker Ivan Locke, does just that in a unique and original way.

Locke is supposedly a happy married man with a wife and two devoted soccer-mad boys, who is also a very successful site manager of a construction company about to undertake one of the largest concrete pours ever done in Europe. [More] 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

Many years ago, in response to funding constraints, a cinematographer colleague extolled the virtues of the ‘story in a box’: a low-budget film concept that makes a virtue of a single location constraint. Of course that is a stock-standard convention in a stage play confined to one box set with an invisible fourth wall, where the playwright contrives to bring the story into that environment. Usually, when such plays are adapted to the screen, the ‘box’ is blown apart and the action is redistributed over a variety of settings.

British screenwriter Steven Knight’s Locke, however, was originally produced as a film, released in 2013, and – as in this stage adaptation – the entire on-screen action focuses on just one character, Ivan Locke, seated in one (albeit mobile) place. Apart from brief before-and-after moments, he is in his car, driving from Birmingham to a London hospital in ‘real time’; a 1 hour 30 minute trip. The film was shot over six nights, with the BMW on a low-loader and three cameras shooting, and it runs for 1 hour 25 minutes.

On stage, as designed and directed by Jett Ranchhod, it runs in a single ‘take’ for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Centre stage is the facsimile of the front end of a car with real car seats in place behind. Three pedestals also dress the stage, upon which the actor we’ll come to know as Ivan Locke (Grant Beban) variously places his high-viz jacket and hard hat, a photo-portrait of a woman and a foetus-scan image. The message he retrieves on his cellphone prompts his decision to get into his car and drive …

The dramas Ivan is locked into in the wider world emerge through a series of hands-free phone calls made or received by him during the journey. And because the slow-reveal is crucial to the dramatic tension that compels our engagement, I must be circumspect in writing about it.

In the film, Tom Hardy’s Ivan actually phoned, or was phoned by, actors clustered in a hotel room. Here, at BATS Propeller Stage, Grant Beban’s Ivan interacts with pre-recorded voices – I think. It’s all timed so well I can’t tell and such is the nature of what’s happening it’s only in retrospect that I consider the technical logistics of it.

Speaking of logistics, Ivan turns out to be in charge of “the biggest single concrete pour in Europe” on a major construction project driven by bosses in Chicago and everything has to go like clockwork from 5.45am the next morning The calls involve Ivan trying to delegate to Donal (Hugo Randall) who drinks, and – despite his extraordinarily unprofessional behaviour – working at aligning Gareth (James Bayliss) and Cassidy (Tom Kereama). P C Davids (Lyndon Hood) is the voice of bureaucratic imperatives. Within this scenario alone there is a great deal at stake.

The ‘inciting incident’ phone message leads to calls with a highly emotional Bethan Maguire (Charlie Potter), and the hospital’s Sister Margaret (Lilia Askew) and Dr Halil Gullu (Devon Nuku). This, too, is fraught with ever-increasing jeopardy.  

Meanwhile, back in the Locke home, Ivan’s wife Katrina (Alida Steemson) and sons Eddie (Jett Ranchhod) and (Sean) Jonathan Beresford, are all geared up to watch a major football game with their husband/dad. The impact of the revelations and their repercussions generate a third strand of intensifying drama.  

All these voices are well articulated and interacted with, to draw vivid pictures in our minds’ eyes as to who and where they are and how they are behaving. As an imagination stimulator it works as well as a good radio play.

Initially Ivan handles everything with such equanimity that I’m not sure he is the most interesting thing for us to be looking at. I begin to notice strange nose-twitches and sniffs that make me wonder if he has recently snorted cocaine – but this leads nowhere, story-wise. (Subsequent investigation on the film’s IMDb trivia page reveals Tom Hardy actually had a cold during the film shoot which could not be mitigated, given the very long takes, so they had to ‘keep it in’. Quite why it was carried through to this stage version is a mystery, given it adds nothing to the drama.)

We do, however, witness more emotional states in Beban’s Ivan as his journey progresses, not least when he confronts his dead father with accusations that go a long way to explaining why he believes it is so important to ‘do the right thing’ now, no matter what. He also seems to arrive at some understanding of why his father did as he did many years ago.

The whole plays is well structured as a classic ‘hero’s journey’ that constantly has us evaluation his strengths, weaknesses and choices, and asking ourselves what we would do if we were in his situation.

The questions we are left with are: is he solving his problem or creating even bigger ones; in gaining something new is he losing a great deal more; is he locked into a perpetuating cycle or breaking out of it?

No matter what each of us answers, there is no doubt Locke takes us on an emotion-twisting and mind-bending journey. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer