Two brothers, out of tune with each other after a traumatic childhood, clash with a cacophony of comedy and rage in this exhilarating, slickly delivered work from playwright Jonathan Caren.
In successful Wes’s (Josh Radnor) lavish eight-bedroom palace, the music mogul is putting up with his aspirational and, to him, irritating younger brother, Alex (Noah Galvin), who is seeking help for their mother and for his own music career. What begins as a back-and-forth between two brothers at very different ends of life’s financial spectrum falls into something much darker as the pair reconcile with the lingering impact of their abusive father, and the poison that can come with sibling conflict, sparked by their differing attempts to sway rapper Defy (Khalil Madovi) in his musical choices.
Over just 75 minutes, Caren’s script is brought to life superbly through Daniel Bailey’s confident direction. Despite the expanse of Wes’s home, the production is exclusively set in one tiny room, reiterating the claustrophobic tension between the pair that is constantly on the verge of exploding. Bailey’s staging of the script is intelligent here, combining neatly with Amelia Jane Hankin’s set design where glass panels and marble walls and floors reflect the characters, nodding to a sense of duality and performance within the pair here, but also constantly enabling the subtle facial expressions and gestures, particularly by Radnor, to come alive. Seating a couple of rows along the stage’s edge is a deft touch too, drawing us into the intoxicating environment where personal and professional manipulation simmers.
It is the dual nature of the two leads which propels the comedy. Initially, Galvin’s Alex, bumbling, wide-eyed and excitable, bounces across the stage with a terrific energy that contradicts Radnor’s slower, methodical Wes. In this sense, Bailey’s direction succeeds in establishing their polarity, but it immediately also makes Alex’s character much more charming, with his puppy-dog expression irritatingly sweet in a way that only a younger sibling can achieve. Galvin’s comic timing is superb throughout, but Bailey’s direction enables this, and the character, to grow organically despite the play’s brevity, resisting the urge to leap to the punchline rather than letting moments sit.
Moreover, Radnor’s stark portrayal of older sibling Wes is equally as funny, in a more scathing manner, but there is also a darkness which floats above the character, which Radnor gradually allows to seep out. Propelled by revelations about Wes’s current relationship with the pair’s estranged, violent father, Radnor is captivating in subtle facial expressions, with a chilling dead-eyed glare that threatens to burn and break Alex in moments of impressively achieved tension. It is the shift and blending between comedy and violence that is so appealing here, and both performers handle this with great care.
Complicating the relationship is the arrival of controversial rapper Defy (Madovi), whose viral video about a pretzel gives Wes a headache and a moment of opportunity. Yet it is Defy’s defiance of Wes, and his interest in Alex’s gospel-themed demo track, which pulls Wes’s new signing towards his brother, fueling the chaos between the siblings. Madovi is good fun here in a role which largely exists just to add fire to the brothers’ differences, though the inclusion of live music and a live performance from Madovi is an entertaining addition, and one which brilliantly pulls this dynamic work with great momentum to its finish.
Hit Machine succeeds enormously in being thoroughly entertaining yet desperately impactful too, with its final fifteen minutes completely engrossing as Wes and Alex finally thrash it out. While Wes spends his time looking for his next biggest record, this explosive work itself tops the charts, failing to miss a beat and, like all hit songs, lingers long after you first experience it.
