Samuel D Hunter’s I am Montana centres on a road-trip, which is always a tough ask in theatre, without the sweeping landscapes and shifting seasons on which similar films rely so heavily. It doesn’t help that the writing is choppy, the acting well intentioned but over-inflated and the directing (Sherri Kronfeld) thudding and increasingly unimaginative.

This production feels like two plays squeezed awkwardly into one. Whilst one play is concerned with Jewish American kid Eben’s recent harrowing stint in the Israeli army, the other play just wants to have fun, delighting in the squabbles and tussles that erupt between Eben and his horny pals on their action packed cross-state adventure. The two halves don’t match up well and split Hunter’s play down the middle, splintering both sides.

What I am Montana should have been is a decent road-trip B movie. With lines like ‘You are my home’ and ‘It’s not gonna end like this!’, the thin script sounds hollow on stage. Despite some admirable lip quivering, gutsy screaming and longing glances from the actors, they make little impact. Christopher Berry is the only one to break free of the script’s limitations, but this is because his character is a Meth addict with a weakness for stripping off, grand philosophising and generally taking the piss. He’s quite funny to watch, but doesn’t have much to do with the play.

There are some striking ideas here about the nature of home and the latent need for family – in whatever guise that might come – but they are drowned out by the screaming, weeping and gun-fire. Hunter has confused exposing his characters with exploring them, and as the angst-ridden monologues pick up pace, reality is left behind. No trauma is left unturned: one lad’s mum was so fat she died when she could no longer reach her food, another guy was orphaned early on, we can’t move for alcoholic parents and all three characters struggle with their homosexual desires.

The real shock would be some kind of normality here, but it gets sillier still and the final twist, in which poor Eben is forced to eat the enemy soldier he has grown to love, is a bit much. It starts to feel like a particularly screwed up Jerry Springer show – though with less compelling characters, no sense of spontaneity and much less insight.

Till 27 June 2009