The new White Bear Theatre had forced itself onto my short list of regular theatres (others include Theatre503, Bush, Arcola, Union and Park) partially because of its proximity, it is a modest walk from Vauxhall, but mostly because I was enjoying the shows there. Chummy sounded like my sort of thing and so I made a fairly last-minute booking for a skimpy £15.
Chummy called itself a "gripping psychological thriller", and it was. And more than that, it was presented brilliantly with a good production (staging, movement, lighting, music, etc.) and an excellent cast of just three.
Jackie Straker (Megan Pemberton) was a Private Investigator with some familiar tropes; ex-police, single, hard drinker and with a disturbed background. It is no surprise that the writer, John Foster, has written a documentary on Raymond Chandler.
Jackie got a strange job from a nameless man who she called Chummy, a police nickname for criminals they were hunting. He wanted her to stop him from killing and he phoned her many times to explain how he felt and what he was planning to do.
The play revolved around the relationship between Jackie and Chummy as she tried to work out who he was, whether she knew him from a previous case, and how she could stop him. She spent most of the time in her small office on the phone to Chummy or going through papers looking for clues. He moved around unknown locations purposely, slowly and menacingly, lurking in the dark dressed entirely in black.
There was a dark sting in the story's dark tail and while I saw it coming it still stung hard when it came. The story was a proper thriller where I was keen to find out who Chummy was and why he wanted to kill. It was also genuinely gripping and deeply psychological. The dark creeping mood of the piece was as powerful as the story.
Chummy was rich and immensely satisfying theatre.
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