An Interrogation, Hampstead Theatre review - police procedural based on true crime tale fails to ring true

In a dingy room with dilapidated furniture on a dismal Sunday evening, two detectives prepare for an interview. The old hand walks out, with just a little too much flattery hanging in the air, leaving the interrogation in the hands of the up-and-coming thruster, a young woman investigating the disappearance of a young woman. Alone, with just a camera for company (we get the video feed also from hidden cameras too) she awaits the suspect for the showdown.

A hit at Edinburgh and now expanded to a tense 70 minutes three-hander, Jamie Armitage’s first play as writer as well as director is a wordy, worthy procedural ideally suited to this downstairs, bunker-like venue. Based on a Canadian true story (and the dubious value of that phrase is borne out later), it’s riding the True Crime podcast craze and will not want for an audience, even at this trickiest time of the year.

Rosie Sheehy, (pictured above with Colm Gormley) Welsh lilt to the fore, captures the nervy edge that drives DC Palmer’s almost irrational commitment to the pursuit of her man. Early on, we clock that she is overly-invested in the case, but, lazily, I (as was, I’m sure, the intention) put such fiery certainty down to her status as a woman in a man’s world, striving to find an abducted woman before it’s too late. But, when we see how she confronts the interviewee, a smooth-talking, RP accented, middle-aged City CEO, a class dimension comes through even stronger - “People like you always get away with it” spat out in righteous anger. How many women in the audience concur with that sentiment compared to how many men, would make an interesting post-show poll - I’m with DC Palmer if we add an almost, for what it’s worth.

Jamie Ballard may be all superficial charm as the management consultant, Cameron, but I’m sure my mother, who had an uncanny nose for such men born of watching too many Alfred Hitchcock movies, would have tagged him as a wrong ‘un before he had even accepted the caution. Ballard is very good, especially when the inevitable pivot comes, as credible as the broken man as he is as the Master of the Universe we first meet. It’s in his eyes that we see what I believe to be the reason for what we witness but… no spoilers! Where’s his solicitor? It’s not that he can’t afford one, so…

Colm Gormley, in a much smaller part (the play is really a two-and-a-half hander) has a critical role in the coda's reveal, a nod, more than that really, to how deep sexism runs in police forces, a dirty secret blown open so tragically in the aftermath of the Sarah Everad murder, now almost four years in the past. That I recall reading about the problems of embedded police dysfunctionality as a student 40 years ago, shows how little progress has been made and how long lies the road ahead.

Back to the play. 

I’m afraid I didn’t believe in it almost from start to finish, a near-fatal flaw when such care has been taken to create a thoroughgoing verisimilitude. I could not conceive of an interview being conducted in such a way given the strictures of the UK's Police and Criminal Evidence Act, the prominence of the case (the local MP has handed in a letter that morning) and the clear and present danger to the officer involved, noting that an experienced police officer was murdered in a police station as recently as 2020. The tactics of bluff and counter-bluff deployed by DC Palmer felt like they would produce, at best, inadmissible evidence, and, at worst, might derail the case before a charge had been laid. A little googling about the inspiration for the play suggests that my impression is not entirely unfounded.

Maybe fans of procedurals take such plotting devices on the chin (I’ll confess to having little interest in the genre myself) but it’s telling that there is no legal consultant listed in the credits. Surely a retired detective or a duty solicitor could have tidied up some elements of what we see? 

Perhaps that’s the old law student poking out from behind the reviewer’s laptop though. It’s a decent yarn that, as all yarns do, requires a suspension of disbelief and it’s delivered by three fine actors in excellent form. It’s also bold in placing class and its concomitant entitlement, rather than the much more straightforward issue of identity, at the heart of its politics. 

And, in a meta-informed way, I am compelled to acknowledge the middle class, white, male entitlement woven into this review of a play that excoriates middle class, white, male entitlement, albeit with the stakes much higher. Physician cure thyself.   

• An Interrogation at Hampstead Theatre until 22 February   
• More theatre reviews on theartsdesk