Mojo – review

4 / 5 stars
This revival of Jez Butterworth's play – a tale of rock'n'roll rivalry in gangland Soho – packs plenty of punch
Stunning performances … Mojo at the Harold Pinter, London. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian Tristram Kenton/Guardian

Jez Butterworth's first play burst on the scene like a fireball in 1995, and it's fascinating to see it revived now in a superlatively acted production by Ian Rickson. Mojo is defiantly urban where the subsequent work is mainly rural. But, like Jerusalem, it is about people who become legends in their own minds and use language to buttress their fragile sense of self. "Out there it's wolves," says a resident of the tacky Soho club, where the action is set in 1958, just as rock'n'roll is becoming big business. But the idea of the club as a safe haven is shattered when its owner, Ezra, refuses to sell his new discovery, Silver Johnny, to a powerful rival, Sam Ross. As a result, Ezra's body is returned to the premises in two dustbins, and the club is placed under siege during a hot summer weekend. What follows is a battle for power between Ezra's sidekick, Mickey, and the late owner's psychotic son, Baby.

At first, it's the visceral dialogue and the black comedy that grip you. Two of the club's younger heavies engage in a sustained riff about Sam Ross's awesome shoes, described as "baby fuckin' buckskin handstitched by elves". Later, the bereaved Baby, conscious of his new power, declares: "You know, there's nothing like someone cutting your dad in two for clearing the mind."

Underneath the virtuosic language and the dark laughter, this is a play about damaged people. Far from being a celebration of cocksure masculinity, as some initially assumed, it is a criticism of it. Butterworth is writing about a patriarchal world in which men talk big in order to disguise their loneliness, panic and fear of emotional contact. Even if Butterworth owes a debt to David Mamet, Harold Pinter and John Carpenter's movie, Assault on Precinct 13, it is handsomely repaid, and Rickson's meticulous production yields a stunning set of performances. Ben Whishaw as Baby radiates a toxic stillness, yet never lets you forget that the character is a victim of paternal abuse. Brendan Coyle as Mickey also presents a figure of burly authority who slowly crumbles before our eyes, and who seems to have a quasi-sexual attachment to Colin Morgan as the group's fall guy. Daniel Mays is on superb form as a jittery spiv who keeps shifting his loyalties and who relies on the support of Rupert Grint as his acolyte. And Tom Rhys Harries, as Silver Johnny, suggests an embryonic Elvis. You won't find much better ensemble acting than this, nor a play that so effectively punctures the pretensions of a hermetic gangland culture.