Marc Blake’s Private View at the Greenwich Theatre Studio has a simple premise: a priceless painting goes missing on a private island, and there are five potential suspects. It’s part classic whodunnit, part critique of the elite art world, and while the characters are entertainingly portrayed, the stakes never feel quite high enough to draw us in fully.
Artist in Residence Joan (Oyinka Yussuf) is uninspired and isolated, a shut-in on a private island struggling to create strong work. Nonetheless she is hopeful for her big break once The Billionaire Art Collector (Jon Horrocks) views what she has managed to produce. Also anxiously awaiting his arrival is his art dealer (Alan Drake), his second wife (Naomi Bowman) and the museum curator (Jeremy Vinogradov) who escorts a much-anticipated painting. When it goes missing, everyone’s true motives slowly unravel.
It is perhaps intentional that Joan’s is the only memorable character name; to reduce the others to their roles feels a fitting critique of their hollowness. Blake does however rely heavily on privileged stereotypes in Private View. There’s the sharp-tongued wife who of course never eats carbs, the camp curator who is assumed to be gay, the smarmy Bad Man collector obsessed with status. We know he deserves to be messed with, but the tension around the missing painting quickly falls slack, later descending into borderline melodrama.
Joan provides a strong antidote – a Black working-class woman unafraid to call out the rich white men. But even she is confined to stereotypes at points. In one scene she has no care for dinner table etiquette, wishing for fried chicken and bread. It’s a funny moment, if a predictable one.
Saying that, the actors do brilliantly with what they’re given. Yussuf makes a bolshy, brave Joan and we empathise with her struggle to fit into an elite world as a marginalised person. We equally empathise with Drake’s bumbling art dealer, whose demeanour is reminiscent of Lee Mack in a chaotic Not Going Out episode. Jeremy Vinogradov is a funny, rabbit-in-headlights curator and Bowman as the billionaire’s wife is perfectly scorned by her husband. I believed every one of their performances, none more so than Horrocks as the collector, who is a believable, smooth-talking billionaire.
So while Private View is an enjoyable satire, it fails to say anything new. If you’re willing to lean into its stereotypes, and perhaps learn an artist’s name or two for any future tedious dinner parties, you’ll have a good time.
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