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Maybe there is an added level of complexity, too, since Schwimmer's exes all have curiously masculine or sexually ambivalent names. To boot, this is a radically questioning form of morality play. The antihero may also be a self-portrait as Schwimmer's character is a writer with a surreptitious notebook. All excellent performances.As for the script, LaBute certainly writes terse, loaded dialogue. His vignettes of Man behaving badly and his probing of emotional scars will make almost everybody, male and female, wince with recognition. Sara Powell's Tyler is the seductive light relief after that: an easy-going and frisky hippy chick - though she too is more vulnerable than she seems.
Third in line, Lesley Manville's Lindsay is a ferociously brusque older woman, demanding a sharply twisted form of retribution in business-like tones, but with chinks in her armour. Just under the surface, he is a mess of anxieties, regrets and lust.Catherine Tate proves that she is not just a top comedienne but an outstanding serious actress. Playing Sam, Schwimmer's high-school sweetheart whose wounds are still raw, Tate exudes shyness, shocked pain and then a menacing, seething sense of outrage. At the same time, you glean that he's a whirl of thoughtless egotism who has left a trail of lasting hurt and bitterness in his wake And he is now having his own mid-life crisis. He also hovers between making up and making out again, without telling his fianc?In his anonymous grey suit, Schwimmer effortlessly plays an ordinary Joe and mildly ridiculous cad, laughing gustily with a hint of nervousness and ducking awkward pauses by diving into the mini-bar. Schwimmer's sitcom credentials are at once fitting and unsettling because this is a kind of edgy, dark, Don Giovanni-ish farce.Schwimmer's chronically uncommitted character jets round the States, ticking off his list of old flames; his multiple rendezvous in near-identical hotel rooms all go hideously wrong as he keeps adding insult to injury while, purportedly, trying to atone for his past flightiness. ButSome Girl(s) - which stars David Schwimmer from Friends as the unnamed Man - leaves you wondering if this dramatist is losing his visceral edge.The fault does not, essentially, lie with David Grindley's tightly paced and tense production.
Some Girl(s) depicts a guy on the brink of marriage visiting a string of jilted ex-partners, and that's followed next week by a love-triangle drama at the Donmar called This Is How It Goes. These ought to have the combined impact of a double-barrelled shotgun, going by LaBute's previous bleak visions of modern callousness and cruelty. America's Neil LaBute has two major premieres in London this month. This may have been because of the imperfect timing of the English surtitles, but I was ultimately disappointed by this production.Touring to 18 June 0870 111 200. However, after Simon Russell Beale's feverously intelligent Vanya in Sam Mendes' Donmar production, Sergei Kurishev appears stolid in the title role. He is a depressed, lumbering bear of a man, and the comedy doesn't always come across either.
