THEATER REVIEW- Man Across the Way

Man Across the Way is a tense drama about two police officers conducting surveillance of the nameless “man across the way.” When Fraser’s wife is hospitalized after a London bus is bombed, he becomes inexplicably convinced that the man they have been watching is responsible---and subsequently both he and his partner decide to take matters into their own hands. The most frightening character in the play is this partner, Dougie, whose own violent tendencies are rationalized as a do-gooder’s-puppy-like effort to rid the world of evil. His willingness to not question the man’s guilt evokes the haunting echo of the pawn’s complicity “ours is not to wonder why.”

Though the script is excellently acted and staged by the four-person cast, it gives the impression of being incomplete. The strained relationship between husband and wife lends a good balance to the surveillance scenes and is cleverly connected by a line about staring at something until it disappears, but is unfortunately never extended. While the man-across-the-way is an understandably one-dimensional character (what do we really know about those we watch at a distance?), it is Fraser himself who is an inexcusable emotional blackbox (his wife puts up with it, the audience should not be similarly treated). I understand the stylistic choices to be sparse, but the holes in rising action were products of underwritten intentions and desires.