Teddy Ferrara, Donmar Warehouse, review: A sociologically provocative but over-controlled drama

The story is partly based on the real-life case of a young man who took his own life when he discovered that his room mate was spying on his actual erotic encounters with men via a webcam deliberately left-on

(Manuel Harlan)

There are two student suicides on the campus of the state US university which is the setting for the tack-sharp but self-puncturing new play by Christopher Shinn. One of them died before the drama begins and it's a bone of contention whether there is enough evidence to establish that he was gay. The title character (a bravely squirm-making Ryan McParland) is a lonely geek who has built up an alternative online identity that gives him an outlet for exhibitionist sexual release. Teddy's fate is partly based on the real-life case of a young man who took his own life when he discovered that his room mate was spying on his actual erotic encounters with men via a webcam deliberately left-on.


 Luke Newberry (Gabe) and Griffyn Gilligan (Jaq) in Teddy Ferrara
 (Manuel Harlan)

The staff and fellow-students do everything with their dead brethren but truly mourn them. Shinn's play is a clever take on whether the rhetoric of tolerance still surpasses the reality as the deceased are appropriated by different interest-groups. Matthew Marsh delivers a hilarious performance as a President tripping over himself to appear bullishly liberal but whose unreconstructed prejudices keep poking through his convoluted born-again act. The trouble, though, is that not even Dominic Cooke's astonishingly well-acted production can make you care, on your pulses, about the participants in Shinn's sociologically provocative but over-controlled drama.