Poison

Poison tells the story of newly pregnant twentysomething Rachel, her partner Matt and her issues-laden siblings Julia and Toby. Every member of this circle suffers from an addiction problem of some kind, but Matt insists he’ll give up the ciggies and cocaine for the good of the baby. When he fails to stick to his promise at Toby’s birthday party he sets in motion a chain of events which eventually lead to irony-tinged tragedy.

There is practically nothing to recommend Poison. The cast is uniformly poor, with stilted dialogue and hammy overacting the order of the day. At times the acting style is naturalistic but mere minutes later lines are delivered in a more stylised manner. Things get even worse when the players are required to appear drunk, mumbling and stumbling through their parts unconvincingly.

When it comes to the writing itself there is little improvement. It’s not funny enough to be a black comedy but the plot is too ludicrous for it to be taken seriously, while all four characters are loathsome and crude caricatures eliciting no sympathy or empathy.

A couple of scenes are misjudged to the point of offensiveness and the last 15 minutes descend into solipsistic melodrama. Any message about the nature of addiction and insecurity is lost to these shock tactics and a potentially interesting big reveal near the end is fluffed.

This is a truely poisonous production which shouldn’t be encouraged to spread.