Chimerica @ The Harold Pinter Theatre – A Review

Lucy Kirkwood’s feted new play Chimerica is currently running at London’s Harold Pinter Theatre, and I went along last weekend to see what all the fuss is about…

chimerica review harold pinter theatre

Stephen Campbell Moore & Trevor Cooper by Johan Per

Sensitively directed by Lyndsey Turner, the play centres around Joe (Stephen Campbell Moore), the American photographer who captured the image that shocked the world in 1989 – a man standing defiantly in front of a tank during the Tiananmen Square protests of at year – and his quest many years later to revitalise his flagging career by tracking down the ‘tank man’, whatever the cost…

Chimerica uses Joe’s relationship with his friend Zhang, a Chinese activist turned teacher (played by Benedict Wong, currently starring in Channel 4’s Top Boy) to take a critical look at both the cultural similarities and the stark differences between China and America, including a very chilling reminder (through a fleeting scene showing Zhang’s intimidation and torture at the hands of the State Police) that despite the intervening 24 years, open discussion of the incident is still absolutely forbidden. If you’re curious about the origins of the play’s title, this strange jammed-together word was coined by historian Niall Ferguson to describe the ongoing and uncomfortable symbiosis of these two superpowers…

Moore and Wong are ably supported by a large cast of well-known faces from stage and screen, including Claudie Blakley who plays the ‘customer profiling expert’ who soon becomes a love interest for Joe, giving these characters the private space to reveal their deepest feelings. If this complex play has any flaws, I wasn’t really convinced by this relationship – while the others interactions between characters seem solid and well-founded I just couldn’t perceive any on-stage chemistry between the two…

Plaudits should definitely go to Es Devlin for the remarkable set, which is almost as complex as the plot – it features a vast rotating cube which turns through 360 degrees to reveal bedrooms, kitchens and offices spread right around the world.

Chimerica runs at the Harold Pinter Theatre until 19 October – you’ll find tickets online here.