Robert Icke turns his attention to the grisly events of July 2010, when killer Raoul Moat sparked the biggest manhunt in British history
It is the question that never gives up, that can never be conclusively answered one way or another: are some people born evil, or do dreadful actions come about as a result of damaging circumstances?
Into this old-as-time debate – and fresh from his recent haul of Critics’ Circle and Olivier Awards for his modern-day reimagining of Oedipus – steps writer-director Robert Icke, as he turns his attention to the grisly events of July 2010, when killer Raoul Moat sparked the biggest manhunt in British history.
Icke, who takes Andrew Hankinson’s 2016 book You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life [You are Raoul Moat] as his jumping-off point, dangles a quote from the prime minister at the time, David Cameron as a provocation for these powerfully unsettling 100 minutes of drama: “Raoul Moat was a callous murderer. Full stop. End of story.”
For even while Moat documented his rampage in detail on Facebook, an alarmingly sizeable online community of admirers was springing up. After the recent impactful Netflix drama Adolescence, we might call Manhunt another terrifying update from the frontline of toxic masculinity.
Except Icke is far too clever a theatre-maker to opt for one neat tick-box answer. Pre-show, a shaven-headed, bulked-up Moat (Samuel Edward-Cook, glowering and impressive) prowls behind prison bars, filmed ominously from above.
From there, Icke’s fluidly stripped-back production uses a cast of eight to represent various characters and eras in Moat’s chaotic life, starting with a troubled childhood with a bipolar mother and homing in on his two months inside for assaulting one of his children, a claim he vehemently denies. Domestic violence swirls unsettlingly as his relationship with girlfriend Sam (Sally Messham) disintegrates. Moat is unwavering in his assertion that Northumbria Police have “got it in for me”.
The auditorium is plunged into complete darkness as we listen to the harrowing testimony of the policeman whom the bulging-eyed Moat blinded during his rampage. This is an unflinching step by step documenting of the disintegration of an innocent life that ends in the officer’s suicide. “It felt easy,” says Moat simply of this catalysing act of violence.
The most moving section is the most unlikely sounding: a conversation between Paul Gascoigne (Trevor Fox) and Moat as during that infamous July week. In reality, an intoxicated Gazza turned up and offered himself as an ad hoc negotiator – the police refused to let him anywhere near the scene.
Yet what Icke imagines is a dialogue of beautiful, sorrowful honesty between two broken men from the North East, both full of a bottomless rage and self-loathing whose only outlet comes in the warped form of hurting themselves and the women who love them.
A contemplative silence settled upon the auditorium after the first-night curtain call, since Icke has given us a very great deal to contemplate.
To May 3 (020 7565 5000, royalcourttheatre.com)