A modern western, featuring two actors from the Marvel Cinematic Universe certainly fits Starburst’s ‘niche’ and ‘cult’ remits. It’s perhaps a surprise to find this combination of factors in a West End theatre in central London, in a play which features only three actors, with a running time of around 100 minutes. But here we are. Clarkston, a play about frontiers and boundaries and how both change, also marks the West End debut for writer Samuel D Hunter (The Whale) and Director Jack Serio (Uncle Vanya).
The play’s title comes from the town in which it is set, located in Washington, the US state in the north-west of America that borders both Canada, and the Pacific Ocean. The town of Clarkston is named after the American frontier explorer, William Clark, of the partnership of ‘Lewis and Clark’. Whilst that duo’s exploits are celebrated in America, here in the UK the specifics of those stories are less well known.
To an extent therefore, the play relies on our understanding of the tropes of the western: loneliness; confusion, and; a desire to find ourselves, in order to carry the audience through the narratives, as we accompany Jake (Joe Locke: Agatha All Along; Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street) and Chris (Ruaridh Mollica: Vision Quest; A Thousand Blows) as they work the night shift at Clarkston’s Costco.
The Costco location acts as the metaphorical frontier for most of the show. Costco’s American warehouses are enormous spaces, and that vastness is cleverly conveyed through Milla Clarke’s set design. Stacey Derosier’s lighting design works to convey the desolation of the locations, and, in one sepia-lit scene, the nostalgic yearning for a more innocent past that never really existed.
Jake is new to the job, and he’s mostly very willing to tell colleague Chris all about his life to date. We quickly find that Jake is from the east coast of America and went to a Liberal Arts College, where he studied Post-Colonial Gender Studies. Essentially, he’s the American Middle Class dream personified in pale beige chinos, with a preppy backpack. Locke’s performance is warm and engaging: bubbly when Jake wants to share, more withdrawn when Jake wants to stay isolated. He’s also gay, as is Mollica’s Chris, and the temptation to make this an ‘opposites attract’ romance is quickly dealt with and rejected.
The production’s marketing has been built around Locke – familiar to British audiences not just from that turn as Wiccan in Agatha All Along, but also from the three seasons and a forthcoming movie of Heartstopper. Locke is assured as the lead of the production, and, having seen his earlier performances in both Sweeney Todd and The Trials (staged at London’s Donmar Warehouse in summer 2022), we can see Locke’s developing confidence and maturity as a performer. And that skill which we first observed in The Trials, of Locke’s ability to focus and listen to his fellow actor’s performances, remains evident in this much more intimate production.
Despite that marketing campaign, it’s Mollica who has the meatier role. Sparking with onstage mum Trisha (Sophie Melville: Iphigenia in Splott), Chris’s narrative arc puts him through an emotional ringer. Solidly working class, his hopes and dreams have been relegated to afterthoughts by Trisha’s selfishness and her repeated acts of betrayal. His lived experience is a reflection of his lack of options, and lack of hope. He’s never ventured outside this tiny portion of the western United States, and, despite his hopes, never truly expects to.
Initially brittle and even resentful of Jake’s good fortune and easy life, Chris slowly opens himself up to Jake’s constant attempts to build a friendship. That Chris’ attempts to expand his own horizons are repeatedly thwarted is a tragedy that Mollica’s performance demands we engage with, and meditate upon. The final interactions between Chris and Trisha are devastating in their emotional intensity and visceral anguish, and despite the staging meaning we can’t see Mollica’s face, we can understand just how emotionally wrung out Chris has become.
Melville doesn’t have a lot to do, but she does it convincingly, and you really believe her turn to nastiness during her parking lot located denouement.
As this is an American play, it’s as much about themes and ideas as it is about a straightforward narrative. Whilst the passage of time isn’t always clear, it seems that we cover at least a few weeks, as Jake fully joins the Costco team, and Chris opens up about his own unexplored frontiers. The themes are around loneliness, and of how people who find themselves existing on the margins of society can connect with each other. There’s also a lot about how we find out who we are, and what happens to us when our options are severely limited.
Although there’s a number of very funny moments, there’s little subtlety in the script. The words ‘frontier’ and ‘discovery’ or variants thereon are used repeatedly, to really hammer home the point that the characters should have their whole lives in front of them, and that, even though there may not be much for the American public as a whole to discover geographically, this is not true for the individual: we can always discover new truths about ourselves and the sort of people we are.
The problem is that the script isn’t saying as much as it seems to think it is. There’s a lot of quoting from the journals of William Clark: in one scene towards the end, far too much. The stillness of that scene does work, in context of Chris’ narrative journey at that point, but this would have been an opportunity to hear more from Jake. We know Jake has Huntington’s, a degenerative neurological condition, and we know what that means in terms of his prognosis. But we never learn enough about what Jake thought his life was going to be before he received his diagnosis.
What were Jake’s hopes and dreams before that shadow fell across his life? Where would he be now, if he didn’t have that condition? He’s a distant relative of William Clark, so where are Jake’s journals, to contrast with Clark’s? Where is his discovery of his emotional frontier? He’s brought himself to the other side of the country, but now finds himself trapped. But it’s a fictional entrapment. To quote Jarvis Cocker: “if you called your dad, he could stop it all”. This is a play about writing, and stories, and, somehow, we never actually discover enough about Jake’s own story.
If we overlook this, and focus on what is presented, it has to be said that the chemistry between Locke and Mollica is exceptional. If they really are playing the twin brothers Wiccan and Speed in forthcoming Marvel projects together, then that on screen journey is going to be a lot of fun. Even if they aren’t, we hope they work together again, because the sense of both camaraderie and joy radiates off the stage and sweeps into the audience, so infectious is their apparent pleasure at spending time together.
Modern American plays are generally less familiar to a British theatre-going audience. This play is, probably, not the final frontier for American theatre in London, and is, we suspect, merely the first journey in an undiscovered country of a slightly differing theatrical form, as we foresee that a gentle wave of modern American theatre will probably make its way to UK stages over the next few years.
We think that we here at Starburst see a lot of theatre that is polarising. This is probably another example, although less extreme than with some other productions we’ve seen recently. Here, if you are a fan of Locke, or Mollica, and want to see their West End debuts, in a play that attempts to take big ideas and make them personal, then this is a reasonable way to spend an evening of your life. They are both giving excellent performances in their respective roles as the preppy eastern New Englander, and already world-weary Washington westerner.
If their respective careers don’t interest you, and you don’t much care for American Plays, then this probably isn’t for you. This is a solid play, but it doesn’t break through it’s own boundaries enough to truly satisfy. But if that is the sort of theatre that you wish to experience, then, with the caveats of all of the above, this is strongly recommended.
Clarkston continues at The Trafalgar Theatre on Whitehall in London, until 22nd November 2025. Joe Locke will not appear on Saturday 1st November.
