A dark and stylish new adaptation of the classic Newcastle-noir thriller. Read more …
Jack Carter is back home for the first time in years. He’s back to bury a brother who hated him, in a town he swore he was never going to see again. He’s back to find out who killed his brother, to pay debts and settle scores.
As the local underworld closes ranks, Jack’s bosses back in London find out that Jack has had his fingers in the till, and other places they shouldn’t have been. Jack plays a deadly game of cat and mouse as everyone tries to Get Carter, unless he gets you first.
Campbell’s production is absorbing.
Kevin Wathen’s gimlet-eyed enforcer returns home to avenge his brother’s death in a production that brings in period music and a Hamlet-style ghost.
It’s a gritty experience, which is welcomed, but it’s barely engrossing, making it at best a missed opportunity.
The overall effect of the show is astonishingly static and untheatrical.
All of this is shot through with the depth and intensity of Greek tragedy in a stylish and unremitting piece of slow-burning brutalist noir.
Intense, gritty, tenacious, fantastic – these are just some of the words you could use to describe Northern Stage’s production of Torben Betts’ Get Carter.
Torben Betts and Lorne Campbell--Get Carter