Riflemind kicks off with a treacle-slow, self-indulgent monologue from John Hannah, with his character John bathed in a strip of red light. It doesn’t really improve. Set over one momentous weekend, Andrew Upton’s play depicts the moment that rock band Riflemind consider a comeback. With John having quit the drugs, alcohol and general madness that accompanied his band’s success, the weekend promises repeated temptations and explosive confrontations.

With the plot sign-posted in the opening scenes, this is a play that needs complex and engaging characters to pull it through; what we get instead is a bunch of caricatures trapped in a series of predictable scenarios. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s directing is obtrusive and flashy and his actors’ performances mannered and confused. Despite a few moments of real fear and loneliness, this remains a deeply unsatisfying play which the undoubtedly talented company can do little to save.

The play never finds its genre and veers dangerously between desolate drama and flippant comedy. The clashing tones grind against each other and as the laughs die down, the audience has little to hold on to. The characters are too silly and too slight to engage with and the play’s monotonous rhythm – with everyone dutifully delivering their monologues in turn – lulls the audience into submission. There are some good lines nestled in here, but the dialogue is too static and considered to convince; Upton deals exclusively in throwaway banter and runaway monologues, whereas characters are really found in the spaces in between.

John Hannah injects his role with a bit of spark and the energy dips drastically when he leaves the stage. His character is more tangible than most, though for a recovering addict he copes miraculously well with the return of his friends and the drugs they still use. There is no real struggle here though and although the characters are tussling with their deepest, darkest demons it all feels a bit bland. Furthermore, despite the claustrophobia and unique pressure of the weekend, it is only when pissed or high that the characters let rip. It seems a lazy way to generate real emotion and feels like a waste of a perfectly feasible dramatic situation.

It is hard to shake the feeling of corners being cut here, especially when confronted with such brittle and poorly developed characters. Above all, they’re hard to like; so self-indulgent and self-pitying that it becomes impossible to side with anyone. Worse still, we can’t even hate them. Moments in the play point towards John being a real bastard, yet he is never more than mildly irritating. Agent Sam is a shallow money-grabbing leech, but again the ruthless edge is lost. Despite some forceful performances the emotional highs and lows, the moments of truth and deception are lost completely. Everything is gradually ironed out to almost level, reducing this potentially calamitous weekend to nothing more than a rowdy house party.

Till 3 January 2009