Selfie/Private Peaceful, Ambassadors Theatre - theatre review

It gives me no pleasure to do down the efforts of a group of young actors, especially when they form the 15-strong ensemble of the National Youth Theatre’s commendable West End Rep season. Now in its second year, this project aims to provide a credible alternative to the increasing costs of formal acting training. So far, so faultless, but the problem is that both of these pieces have the awkward, try-too-hard quality of a mediocre school play. Even more worryingly, no bright stars of the future announce themselves.

In theory, it’s a splendid idea to reboot Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray as Selfie, set in the near-future world of Hoxton hipsters. It’s a nifty nod to gender equality to make Dorian (Kate Kennedy) a woman, a model-cum-celebrity with an increasingly nasty portrait picture on her iPad. This screen-based set-up is the one clever concept, as we can watch Dorian’s face canker after the death of Sybil Vane (Ellie Bryans), now a tormented singer-songwriter from a council estate. Yet Brad Birch’s lumpen script and Paul Roseby’s uninspired direction make it grindingly hard to care.

Private Peaceful, adapted by Simon Reade from Michael Morpurgo’s novel about a young WW1 soldier court-martialled and shot for cowardice, is usually presented on stage as a poignant monologue. Here, unwisely, it’s an ensemble piece as cluttered and unhelpful as the stifling set design. There’s a cornucopia of over-acting and redundant movement and amid the endless rattle and clatter of Paul Hart’s staging there’s almost no time for quiet reflection on this most sombre-making of topics.

In rep until Nov 26 (08448 112334, theambassadorstheatre.co.uk)