On 1 July 2010, 37-year-old former panel-beater, bouncer and tree surgeon Raoul Moat was released from prison after serving an 18-week sentence for assaulting a child. Two days later, with a sawn-off shotgun, he shot and seriously wounded his ex-partner and killed her new boyfriend and went on to shoot and blind a policeman and, believing a police conspiracy had been directed against him, threatened to kill any police who tried to stop him. This triggered what has been declared the biggest manhunt in the UK in modern times.
You might expect Robert Icke’s play (the award-winning director’s first as a dramatist) to be a police drama, but instead, its subject is Raoul Moat himself presenting his own story in a stunning central performance from Samuel Edward-Cook. He is seen as the audience assemble, pacing the perimeter of his prison cell both through the metal mesh of Hildegard Bechtler’s set and in sharp video projection on it from an overhead camera. At the same time as establishing the combination of frustration and pent-up energy that drives him, it also winds up the audience. As Moat explodes to a metallic crash and begins to beat on the walls of the cage that encloses him, he rises and the play proper begins with him coming downstage and addressing the audience, though he is answering the questions of an unseen psychiatrist.
“I feel tired, anxious, isolated, helpless, angry,” he tells us, and declares that he has suffered nine years of police harassment. We seem to be in an imaginary court where he both presents his own story and faces arraignment with incidents enacted. First, there is his trial for violence against a child—which he hotly denies. His counsel (Trevor Fox) urges him to plead guilty to gain a more lenient sentence, but he won’t and insists on his innocence. To admit guilt would lose him access to his children. There is no doubt of his feelings for them, but what is the truth? He admits a short temper, and we see his rage or frustration explode into shocking violence, sometimes quickly followed by remorseful affection.
We only get a glimpse of the side of Raoul that girlfriend Samantha fell for (though muscular Edward-Cook could be a turn-on), but Sally Messham makes her a young woman who, despite six years together (and still only 22), clearly can’t take any more violence. Did that violence have its origins in the way his mother (Patricia Jones) treated him?
Leo James, as Samantha’s new boyfriend, has little chance to be more than a body. Angela Lonsdale is a court official and with James becomes police and prison officers alongside Nicholas Tennant.
In a central section, we hear PC David Rathband’s account of both his shooting and what came after. It is delivered in a blackout, and no actor is identified. Whoever it is certainly deserves credit for their controlled but very moving delivery.
The dramatic darkness not only gives the audience a tiny taste of sight loss, it also gives time for a radical scene change. When the light comes up, it is on a very different scene, a theatrical landscape with bushes, turf and a skyscape where Moat is hiding with two men who have aided his action. Why they are involved and how they acquired his gun and ammunition is not explained. They did exist, but as Moat reaches the end of his road, not everything is real. He never knew his father, there was no name on his birth certificate, but here the French farmer dad Moat invented turns up, as does footballer Paul Gascoigne (who did arrive but the police would not allow past). Gazza shares his own inadequacies and his rages in an unburdening that is beautifully played by Trevor Fox but never actually happened. This is play that also accommodates corrections with Moat commenting, “they didn’t actually say that”—often after statements that might have led to solutions.
As furniture and bodies go flying, being about Moat can be scary and Manhunt doesn’t whitewash his character or in any way excuse him. It is a picture of that toxic pseudo-virility that raises questions; it doesn’t offer answers, though there are hints of reasons. “I am a bad man,” says Moat, “but I didn’t hit my kids.” Such self-labelling could be one of them.
Played straight through (just over 100 minutes without interval), its drama constantly underlined by Tom Gibbon’s sound design and Azusa Ono’s lighting, Robert Icke, directing his own text, generates theatrical excitement, and, in Edward-Cook’s Moat, a performance that could be a contender for next year’s award ceremonies.
[Since the above was published, we have now learned that PC Rathband is played by Nicolas Tennant. Bravo!]