This was my first time visiting one of London’s most successful off-West End playhouses, the Lyric Hammersmith.  With its luscious red interior and vast stage, I was left questioning why I hadn’t been there before.  Three Kingdoms is the second show of World Stages London, which is an exciting collaboration between eight leading London theatres and twelve UK and international co-producers that celebrates the exhilarating cosmopolitan diversity of London.  This collaboration has been taking place throughout April and May, and will continue through June.

This play, on paper, makes for a very exciting spectacle, and on stage it certainly does not disappoint.  The synthesis across three languages, countries and theatre cultures – a British writer, German director and an Estonian designer, with actors hailing from each of the three countries – creates a unique and unfailingly engaging production, that boggles the mind and tickles the ribs in equal measure.  Writer Simon Stephens deserves full recognition for binding the complex and myriad elements of this project together in a homogenous form that rings true with each of the three distinct cultures.

Without wanting to give too much away, the story starts simply (yet grotesquely!); a detached female head washes up on the banks of a London river in a waterproof bag, and the police seek to find the culprit.  Their search, beginning in London, eventually leads them to Germany, and later Estonia, with the clashes across cultures becoming more and more evident by the acting, staging, costume and use of props and audio; effectively a full range of dramatic crafts are exploited to give the true impression of the cultural conundrums that the writer wishes to convey.  The result is that the second act descends into what appears to be some kind of mental marathon, laced with themes of sex trafficking, political and police corruption and brutality, and ultimately, some sort of steely and chilling patriotic pride.

The acting is strong across the board.  I was extremely impressed by the stamina of Nicholas Tennant who played Detective Inspector Ignatius Stone; the seeming protagonist.  This role is something of a tour de force, and Tennant did not at any stage falter.  Steven Scharf’s performance as Steffen Dresner was a comic injection that was consistently entertaining.  The inventive casting in this production is another note of praise, as a number of the actors played different roles across the different countries.  The standout of these for me was Rupert Simonian, who played Tommy White and a German and Estonian Receptionist.

This play will leave you breathless and pondering the whole tube journey home.  I thoroughly recommend it!

Continues until 19 May – book tickets here.

Written by a Thoroughly Modern Man, Mark McCloskey.