Mail on Sunday, 20 July 2003
by Georgina Brown

**Thanks, Catherine

This week Kenneth Branagh returned to the London stage after a decade away, and made his first appearance ever at the National Theatre. He takes the title role in 'Edmond', David Mamet's extraordinary, exhilarating 1982 play which murders liberal values as it tells of a man's search for himself in a nightmarish, pitiless city.

The play starts off in a darkly comic vein and gets progressively darker. Ordinary 37-year-old businessman Edmond's journey is triggered by a visit to a clairvoyant, who tells him he is not where he belongs. He tells his hard wife he's leaving and not coming back ("You don't interest me spiritually or sexually"), and begins his descent into hell.

He tries to get laid, and wanders meekly to a club which proves too expensive. Edmond is not simply new to New York lowlife, he's also short of cash, rather mean, deeply uncool and increasingly angry.

A hooker in shiny red thigh-length boots looks like a cheaper option, but 'treatment' through a small hole in a large screen does not appeal. Edmond's disappointment, humiliation and degradation continue at a 'club' where again coitus is interrupted by his lack of funds. He runs out wearing only his vest, a figure more ridiculous than pitiful, only to be fleeced and beaten up by cardsharps.

Battered and bleeding, Edmond is down but not yet out. He finally loses it when a pimp demands his money or his life, and Edmond lets rip with blows and a torrent of racist abuse.

It's a shocking moment, which Edmond evidently finds liberating, even enjoyable. Galvanised by his new-found potency, he makes a pass at a waitress and scores. And it's as if a lid has been blown off a pressure-cooker. Words pour out as he sheds any vestige of self-control, culminating in a sudden, brutal murder. Mamet's writing here is superb, so elegant, economical and insightful.

There's something of Edmond in all of us, and Mamet pins it down brilliantly.

Ed Hall's fluid, vivid, intelligent production captures a city which is also a state of mind, and Branagh's dark night of the soul reminds us of what we have missed with a performance that is precise, penetrating and painfully eloquent.

The unexpected and tender embrace which ends this piece takes your breath away. It also explains why Mamet considers this play one of hope. All this, thanks to the current Travelex season for just £10.