Mad House
Ambassadors Theatre
Until Sept 4
Whatever happened to Bill Pullman, the square-jawed hero of Independence Day? Well, he’s ended up on the West End stage, looking strangely like he’s metamorphosed into Bill Murray. He plays a cantankerous dying old man in Theresa Rebeck’s play Mad House, alongside David Harbour as his long-suffering son and carer. When his boy is told that his father isn’t going to make it, he laconically replies that none of us are going to make it.
There’s a good play to be written about what happens to us in advanced old age and stricken with ill health, but I am not sure Rebeck’s play altogether lives up to its potential. The characters are stock and predictable: Stephen Wight and Sinéad Matthews pitch up when they hear dad’s about to snuff it and fret about his will and who’s going to get the house. Akiya Henry takes what acting honours are to be had as the hospice nurse, who somehow manages to accord dignity to a very undignified patient.
The play touches on interesting issues – the family are Catholics and the right to die crops up briefly, in addition to why Pullman’s character remained for so long in a loveless and dysfunctional marriage – but none of them are adequately explored. The second half is very heavy going indeed and the ending is feeble.
I liked the designer Frankie Bradshaw’s evocation of the old man’s rambling, cluttered home, but Moritz von Stuelpnagel’s direction is at best plodding. Pullman is a good actor, but his capacity to run with this part is as seriously impeded as his bedridden character.
