Review: Martyr, Bristol Old Vic

Marius von Mayenburg’s work is acclaimed for its intelligent and visceral exploration of significant social, political and personal issues. The Ugly One skewered the contemporary obsession with physical beauty, while El Dorado considered the military invasion of Iraq and transposed it to a Western city.

Von Mayenburg’s latest, Martyr, tackles religious, and irreligious, fundamentalism and the extremes to which unthinking belief or genuine faith can push an individual.

Martyr’s main protagonist, Benjamin Sinclair, is not a jihadist or crazed, middle-aged Christian TV evangelist – but a schoolboy. He speaks almost entirely in quotes from the Bible, he is a Christian as extreme as those found in the Westboro Baptist Church and his beliefs are presented as a form of worsening neurosis and mania. Thankfully Daniel O’Keefe takes this gift of a role and resists the temptation to turn it into a feast of over-acting: his interpretation of Benjamin is subtle and honest, and all the more chilling for it.

However the actors playing schoolchildren are hampered by the dialogue, which is delivered with conviction yet sounds like earnest teenagers from American TV series who spend all their time talking about their feelings. Dawson’s Creek or The O.C., anyone?

All of the tropes associated with glossy and superficial Young Adult TV are present and correct in this depiction of teenage life. Benjamin’s only friend George is presented as another outsider, and as outsiders are wont to do, they bond and become friends – yet Benjamin always has the upper hand. The school temptress, powerfully played by Jessye Romeo, is a young woman discovering and abusing her power over men. A cliched bully even makes a brief appearance.

Fortunately the adult roles have realistic dialogue, otherwise the play would not work or satisfy on any level. The adults in Martyr are the stereotypes one invariably expects from any depiction of schoolteachers and harassed single parents. They are well acted but as characters each is little more than a cipher to present von Mayenburg’s point of view.  This would be acceptable if his point of view was startlingly original –but it simply isn’t.

It wasn’t a stretch to predict that the PE teacher wouldn’t be astoundingly intelligent or insightful, the Headmaster would be an un-PC malleable fool and the biology teacher would be a Dawkins-esque uber-atheist with hints of liberalism dropped in for good measure. As the play progressed to its inevitable miserable conclusion, some spark of original thought would have been a welcome relief.

Martyr is not a bad play: it’s simply not that good or thought-provoking. Perhaps the obsession with fundamentalism in all its forms being drummed into us by the media, TV and film has already revealed all that needs to be said about fundamentalists. 

Martyr finishes at Bristol Old Vic on Saturday, September 12. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.bristololdvic.org.uk/martyr.html