REVIEW: DEAR MARTIN at Arcola Theatre 5 – 29 March 2025

'a letter-fuelled bromance' ★★★

What do you do when your wife has fallen in love with a serial killer? Write him a sternly worded letter, hop on a bus to the mental hospital and ask him nicely (pretty please) to knock it off, of course. 

That's the premise of Dear Martin, which quickly turns into a letter-fuelled bromance between Dave (Ben Simpson), a man so naively hapless I'm surprised he didn't end up dead in a ditch decades ago, and Martin (Alex Mugnaioni), the charming inmate with the vaguely horrifying past. David tries to Google him, but it's a common name and Martin won't tell him the details, not just yet: ‘Sometimes, early on, the truth just confuses things.’

Edward Judge and Amelia Donkor round out the cast in multi-roling parts, Judge primarily as fellow inmate Ben, eager for Martin's friendship, and Donkor as everything from psychiatrist to escort to Dave's wife Lucy, wailing from the wings. 

This show is a little like what you'd get if you crossed Wes Andersen with Sherlock: ‘Because I'm BORED!’ Martin says, when asked to explain why he does the things he does. ‘We're all psychopaths, deep down.’ The lines are as snappy as the scene transitions. Our resident killer's ties are bursting with polka-dotted flair. The music is bouncy and whimsical, letting us know not take any of this talk of death and betrayal and mutilation too seriously. 

And that, perhaps, is the issue. What starts off as fast-paced, winking fun loses some of its shine the more the show goes on. Not for any dip in craft: playwright Madeleine Brettingham's lines stay eminently quotable. Director Wiebke Green's staging remains slick and inventive in the gorgeously lit and sound-scaped space. But this is not a show that ever gets you to care, very much, about its main characters. 

Why? I'm not sure. Maybe it's partially to do with the tone, the over-the-top, light-hearted satire. Maybe it's to do with the sometimes jarring acting styles, which bring sarcastic English mockery up against panto-esque performance. And maybe it's in the lack of care for logic, in service of the joke: How is Martin receiving a flood of letters from lovestruck female fans if Dave can't find his details online? And anyway, are we really to believe that a common name is enough to keep a notorious killer's records from popping up on Page 1 of Google, if you add literally any keyword to your search?

Yet the more the show goes on, the more it seems to want us to take its themes seriously—the nature of friendship, for example, and the possibility of, if not redemption, then humanity. The themes are there, in the script—particularly in Martin's cruel interactions with inmate Ben, or with his disillusioned psychiatrist. But the production (perhaps fittingly in a show about a psychopath) doesn't invest in building the groundwork of empathy for them to fully pay off.

That's not to say this isn't fun. The actors are having fun, the audience is having fun—particularly when the former rope the latter into their antics. Yet for now, Dear Martin hasn't quite figured out the balance between glee and grit a dark satire deserves.

DEAR MARTIN 

Written by Madeleine Brettingham | Directed by Wiebke Green

Arcola Theatre, 5th – 29th March

BOX OFFICE

Cast

Martin: Alex Mugnaioni

Dave: Ben Simpson 

Ben / Tom: Edward Judge

Dina / Cee Cee / Ava / Maria / Lucy / Security Guard: Amelia Donkor 

Creative Team

Writer: Madeleine Brettingham

Director: Wiebke Green

Set & Costume Design: Kit Hinchcliffe

Sound Designer: Julian Starr

Artwork Design: Madison Coby

Stage Manager: Lola Glading