BBC Online, 18 July 2003
by Norman Miller

Kenneth Branagh has made his debut at the National Theatre in David Mamet's play, Edmond. It is his first appearance on the London stage for 11 years.

Twenty three scenes in just over an hour. David Mamet was clearly in a hurry in this early 1980s drama, the energy crackling off each taut vignette as we follow a very bad night in the life of Edmond (Branagh).

Prone to talk too much and too carelessly, Edmond no longer finds either his wife or his life "interesting".

To her amazed fury, he walks out in search of a deeper reality he imagines is waiting in the city for a man willing to open himself up to experience.

But the city devours this stiff white middle-class American ingénue as he shuttles from bar to brothel, a 100% loser whose woes Mamet chronicles with a sharp black humour like a screwball tragedy.

While Mamet has spoken of Edmond as a play about race, Edward Hall's production weaves that into a broader vision of terrible powers of convention.

But Mamet offers a strange solace with a final image of tenderness as potent as it is utterly unexpected.

Branagh steps back onto the London stage with a taut and controlled performance, capturing Edmond's violently shifting moods from the dark humour of the early scenes to the pathos of the final section.

With 30 other actors whirling through the scenes, it is amazing any get the chance to make much impression but Tracy-Ann Oberman as Edmond's wife, Nicola Walker's Glenna and Nonso Anozie as Edmond's cellmate grab their brief opportunity particularly well.

And amid Mamet's trademark quickfire dialogue, there are moments of poetry and powerful images of birds before an earthquake. Quick, raw and memorable.