Until now Robert Icke’s output has largely been focused on updating classics for modern times — with great success, it should be said. Last year’s Oedipus with Mark Strong and Lesley Manville picked up four Olivier Awards, including Best Revival. Glance at his CV and you’ll note productions of 1984, Oresteia, The Doctor, Uncle Vanya, Mary Stuart, The Wild Duck and The Crucible. In many cases Icke has entirely rewritten the text, so it is unsurprising that for his first fully self-penned production he turns to adapting real life and recent history.
Raoul Moat (Samuel Edward-Cook) has been released from prison having served two months of a four-month sentence after being found guilty of assaulting his child. While in prison, his girlfriend Sam (Sally Messham) left him for another man and, in an attempt to protect herself from Moat’s violent outbursts, she lies to him, telling him that her new boyfriend is a policeman. In revenge, Moat goes on a shooting spree that leaves Sam in critical condition, her boyfriend dead and a police officer blinded, resulting in the biggest manhunt in UK history.
Events before and during the manhunt are examined as Icke puts Moat on trial for his crimes. We flashback to his interactions with the police, courts and social care system as he fights against charges that he assaulted his daughter to maintain custody of his kids. Icke’s intention is obvious – to show the totality of Moat, rather than to paint him as a one-dimensional boogeyman.
Edward-Cook’s intelligent and intensely physical performance provides an insight into the development of Moat’s character and motives but he is surrounded by shadows. Moat’s girlfriend Sam is underwritten — a character entirely defined by her relationship with Moat — while the other major female characters are played by both Patricia Jones and Angela Lonsdale who alternate scenes. Is Icke suggesting that Moat sees all women as the same? Maybe, but the effect is that the characters are hard to define.
The 12-minute blackout that accompanies Paul Rathband’s (Nicolas Tennant) testimony about Moat’s attack on him as he sat in his police car and its consequences initially seems like a clever simulation of Rathband being thrown into blindness but ultimately feels like an oversimplification of his experience. Meanwhile, Icke allows Paul Gascoigne his moment with Moat, having been prevented access to him in real life, with the two men comparing notes on manhood.
The fictional Gazza may provide Moat with the confidant he had wished for when he reached out for help with his mental health years before the killing but the metaphysical scene jars as it follows the realism that precedes it. Icke repeats the same trick moments later with Moat’s absent father with diminishing returns.
Of course, what had come before wasn’t realism, though it’s almost presented as such. Moat didn’t go on trial for his crimes or answer for his actions. In fact, the Northumbria Police’s dictaphone stopped working so the last hour of Moat’s standoff is confined to the memories of those who were there – but it feels like we are being presented with a version of the truth. The metaphysical framing is played too straight to have an impact, instead, the Moat on Trial structure makes it feel somewhat benign.
An epilogue, tacked onto the end, makes the link to rising rates of suicide rates in men and increasing male violence with a nod towards the influence of figures like Andrew Tate but, as relevant as it is, it feels retrofitted to provide a contemporary resonance. It shouldn’t need this: the consequences of toxic masculinity are obvious in Moat’s case but Icke is sidetracked trying to fully encompass a world of failings in relatively short period of time: the court system, the social care system, policing methods, mental health crisis, absent fathers and how the working class have been failed by society all buzz around the edges of the action, each briefly getting a moment in the spotlight without ever being fully explored.
The production’s Artistic Adviser, Andrew Hankinson, author of the book You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat] writes in the programme notes that “the story [of Moat] means different things to different people. We hang our individual concerns on it: it’s about the north; it’s about toxic masculinity; it’s about modern Britain, it’s about underclass.” That’s why it needs Moat’s 5-minute clarification that this is a play about toxic masculinity because, for the previous 90 minutes, Icke seems unsure of which of these individual concerns he wants to hang his own hat on.
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Manhunt is at the Royal Court Theatre, London until 3 May 2025
