Donmar Warehouse, til 24 August 2024

⭐⭐⭐

Reasonably compelling character drama suffers from up-and-down dialogue.

As your typical inner-city lefty (and a proud trade union member!), I’m a sucker for any story about workers fighting the powers that be. (I’ve mentioned before that my favourite ever film is Matthew Warchus’ Pride, which tells the true story of gay rights activists in 1980s London who throw their support behind striking miners.) So I was predisposed to like Skeleton Crew, featuring four auto plant workers in Detroit in 2008 facing the closure of their factory. What emerges though is less a social commentary (though there are certainly elements of this), and more a character drama about the lives and ambitions of the four protagonists. Overall it’s compelling, though I found myself too often taken out of the drama by dialogue or character choices that stray towards the cliched and turgid.

Three of our four heroes are workers on the factory floor. The de facto lead of the ensemble is Faye, a 29-year veteran of the trade who is a tough-loving mother hen to her colleagues. Joining her breakroom chats are young-uns Dez, who dreams of leaving the factory to set up his own garage, and Shanita, working hard through her pregnancy out of pride in the job and a hope for recognition. Rounding out the foursome is manager Reggie, elevated from his former worker-bee job to a buttoned-up corporate role. It’s Reggie who first hears the news that forms the play’s central drama: the factory is expected to close within the year. Torn between his instinct to look out for his colleagues and a desire to play the company man to protect his own interest, he confides in Faye as a trusted advisor, but begs her not to tell the others ahead of the official announcement. Tensions arise from who knows what when, and as rumours begin to fly the four workmates must ponder what the future holds for each of them.

It’s a pretty decent premise for a character drama, and a lot of it works. The characters are sufficiently well-rounded for us to become invested in their fates and how they navigate this turning point in their lives. There’s enough nuance too in Dominique Morisseau’s book that when the characters find themselves in opposition to one another, we can sympathise with both sides of the argument. From scene to scene though, the dialogue varies in quality. Some of it is wonderful and even quite moving, for example when Shinita describes the pride she feels in working in the same profession as her father. But there are other scenes when the dialogue feels too constructed and laboured; metaphors are stretched and unnecessarily spelled out for the audience, like when Faye draws out a story about a crashing plane to boast about her instinct for survival. There are also some beats that are hit a few too many times for my liking. One of the main conflicts is Reggie’s inability to balance his conscience (concerns for the crew) against his self-interest, and this is returned to in multiple scenes without much actual progression beyond a repeat of his same concerns. 

Skeleton Crew also loses marks from me for the use of a persistent and tedious trope that I’ve railed against before (see The Giant Killers). Please, in the name of all that is good and holy, can we once and for all kill off the noxious narrative in which a man continues to pursue a woman after repeated rejections, only for her to fall for him in the end because she secretly wanted him all along? No means no, people! Quit romanticising stalking! I will die on this hill, with my stiffening knuckles clutching my many exasperated entreaties on this topic.

The cast is good, and in particular I thought the women stood out. Faye is a character who could descend into a stereotype but instead remains extremely likeable – fierce and unstoppable but also protective and funny. I think this has plenty to do with the magnificent and commanding performance from Pamela Nomvete. Racheal Ofori similarly endears us to Shanita – she brings a warmth and vulnerability that’s sweet and girlish without ever undermining Shanita’s dignity or independence. Rounding out the cast are solid performances from Tobi Bamtefa as Reggie and Branden Cook as Dez. 

I had a front-row seat to Skeleton Crew, and while my knees didn’t thank me for choosing such a squashed-in spot, it did give me the chance to appreciate up close the immaculate set made by designer ULTZ. The entire play takes place in the factory’s breakroom, and the finer details (posters on the wall, mismatched mugs, half-broken overhead lights) make it feel incredibly real. The grinding factory diegetically just outside the breakroom wall is conveyed through shadow projections and sounds of machinery that are played in the scene breaks. Though competently done, I confess I wasn’t a fan of this choice – director Matthew Xia pairs it with booming, grungy music, seemingly trying to inject a grittiness that doesn’t tonally match the more thoughtful and nuanced nature of the scenes themselves. 

This tonal mismatch is probably a good representation of how I felt about this play. There’s a lot to like here – compelling character drama, and enough grounding in a real-world time and place to give it some oomph. But a tendency towards overwrought analogies and repetitive beats leaves Skeleton Crew short of its full potential.