Review by Simon Jenner, April 11th 2025
Raoul Moat, who sparked the largest-ever UK manhunt in July 2010 after murdering the boyfriend of his ex-lover and wounding her, might seem a far throw from director Robert Icke’s award-winning Oedipus last year. But then as Icke’s Manhunt shows, Moat was called a “prince” by his mentally-distressed mother. Burdened with this, he seems even more self-blinded. Except Moat blinded another, in what seems a premonition of all the last 15 years have brought, in male toxicity: notably the influence of Andrew Tate. Also directed by Icke at the Royal Court Downstairs, Manhunt plays till May 3rd.
Samuel Edward-Cook in Manhunt Photo Credit: Manuel Harlan
And it’s as striking to think of Icke making his debut here as a playwright as actor Mark Rosenblatt did last year in Giant. If Rosenblatt as actor was directed by Nick Hytner, here Icke naturally directs his own 100-minute work with an unnerving central performance of Moat by Samuel Edward-Cook. Seemingly as pumped and toned as Moat, with a trigger-stare and volatile moments he stalks downstage almost into the front row.
If displaced, violent male alienation is a Royal Court theme (as David Byrne writes), how do we get from Jimmy Porter to here? Why Icke chooses it might be understandable. Though not pushing an Oedipus parallel too closely, Icke does examine in his classical revivals the way implacable forces operate on an individual. Here he asks if that’s really the case.
Following preternaturally on Jack Thorne’s Adolescence and James Graham’s Punch, Manhunt forms a casual, causal trilogy. As quantifiable monsters stalk the world, the more unknowable ones within clamour for acknowledgment.
Agonised, left by his partner Sam whilst in prison, former trees surgeon and bouncer Moat has long blamed the police. Worryingly he was hailed as a “legend” by many on Facebook, fuelling his godfather role to the likes of Tate. And Moat had two friends as accomplices. Edward-Cook’s mix of fractured introspection, chopped logic and genuine abandonment invite glimmers of understanding, and no excuse at all. It’s an extraordinary performance, Edward-Cook’s shaven head and often stripped torso suggesting a man trapped inside his muscle armour: as if the very steroids he uses have walled him up. And one character later suggests that’s exactly what they do.
Splicing fact with speculation and an ingenious extension of things that nearly happened, Icke begins with Moat in custody after the shootings: in reality he shot himself after a stand-off after a week of flight. Imagined conversations that nearly happened, had not the police prevented them, allow nuance, whilst bringing others into the narrative.
There’s a plausible reason Moat’s ex Samantha Stobbart (Sally Messham, reprising her 2023 ITV role from The Hunt For Raoul Moat, theatrically known for an Orange Tree trilogy in 2018), has relatively little to do. Though Sam’s plight in hospital might have been highlighted, there were complaints that the TV drama was still too recent, too raw. Nevertheless Icke, Edward-Cook and Messham don’t flinch from showing Moat’s split desires – yanking Sam to him by her hair then caressing her: all she can do is respond. It’s disturbing and Kev McCurdy’s fight direction has huge work to do: not least when Messham is flung under a table which collapses over her.
Leo James, Sally Messham and Samuel Edward-Cook in Manhunt. Photo: Credit Tristram Kenton
Splitting the narrative is the experience of the traffic officer, David Rathband. It’s more than a theatrical coup, initiating a 12-minute scene change. In total darkness Rathband’s quiet self-torture as the blinded policeman who loses his sight, career, marriage and eventually life speaks for the condition of the blinded man as well as a space for all such victims.
The cast circle, Patricia Jones (known for Mycelial) is beguiling asking questions, heedless friend and gentle police negotiator Danny Kirrane (Jerusalem, West End/Broadway), Angela Lonsdale (last seen here in Simon Stephen’s 1998 Bluebird) is all-round prosecutor and dysfunctional mother. As first victim Chris Brown Leo James, multi-roling like nearly all the cast, has more to do later as the other singalong Moat friend, along with Kirrane. Notably, Nicolas Tennant (The Birthday Party, Theatre Royal Bath) emerges after a brief solicitor role as a remarkable Gazza.
This, the crux of Icke’s work, crafts a coda to retired footballer Gascoigne’s real if drunken attempt to speak to Moat, though he was turned away. Here Tennant stumbles to Edward-Cook, whom he claims he knew, and dispenses the kind of therapy Moat asked for but didn’t wait to receive. This Gascoigne strikingly parallels Moat’s steroid armour with his own drugs and alcohol, further destroying his career. Gascoigne declares he was up there with Pele and Maradonna, and by extension Moat might have a different fate as father. Kirrane returns trying the father angle.
Where Zoe Bryan and Madeleine McKenna alternate Girl, Sam’s daughter with Most, there a more nuanced role for. Nathan Jago and Odhran Riddell who alternate Boy, Moat’s child self. With an echoing orange T-shirt as his elder self looks on – Edward-Cook staring back – the child flinches at his mother and stares back at his end-point, already haunted.
Samuel Edward-Cook and Trevor Fox as Raoul Moat and (later) Paul Gascoigne Photo Credit: Manuel Harlan
Sally Messham, Patricia Jones, Nicolas Tennant, Samuel Edward-Cook, Leo James, Trevor Fox and Angela Lonsdale in Manhunt, Photo Credit Manuel Harlan
Being Icke, it comes with a blaze of theatrical devices, aided by Hildegard Bechtler’s set with its descending cages, at first occluded in Ash J Woodward video designs by a 90 degree pacing Edward-Cook bisecting the vertical one behind (there’s also projections of Moat’s and others’ texts). It’s versatile enough to transform from prison to court room to (after that superbly-placed blackout) Northumberland scrubland; where the second half of the drama works itself out. That’s where its beaten steel panels at the back are revealed, with Azusa Ono’s lighting burnishing them to a Northumberland sky. And Tom Gibbons’ innocuous toe-tapping noughties hits score the banality.
There’s a narrational readjustment in the postlude, unsettling to the end, as Icke and cast swivel on Edward-Cooks final stare. There’s a sense of anatomising Moat, if not quite unravelling his fixations. Centripetal as it is, it’s Moat’s story that vanishes into a black hole. Though David Cameron’s voice proclaims “Murderer… end of story”, it’s a story that can’t end whilst monsters stalk the minds of damaged men. Rightly sheering off the wider public furore and focusing on one man’s disturbance, Manhunt builds with fractured brilliance. Icke’s too canny to empathise more closely in a divisive subject. Which suggests a tragic flaw in conception, overruled by the subject’s urgency. Compelling and required viewing.
Casting Director Julia Joran CDG, Artistic Advisor Andrew Hankinson, Costume Design Associate Laura Hunt, Associate Director Aneesha Srinivasan, Assistant Director Anna Ryder, Dialect Coach to Samuel Edward-Cook Rosie Stancliffe, Dialect Coach to Child Actors Jess Corner
Production Manager Marius Ronning, Costume Supervisor Lucy Walshaw, Company Manager Mica Taylor, Stage Manager Ella May McDermott, DSM Emma Cook, ASM Benedict Jones, Stage Supervisor Steve Evans, Automation Programmers Steve Evans & Maddy Collins, Stage Show Technician & Automation Operator Oscar Sale, Stage Crew Amie Donnelan & Thomas Davis-Coleman, Lighting Supervisor Lucinda Plummer, Lighting Programmer Lizzie Skellett, Lighting Operator Dominika Kosieradzka, Sound Operator Franny Lagemann, Video Engineer Alexander Ramsden, Video Programmer Dylan Marsh, Duty Video Abby Revert, Dressers Katie Pollard & Mila Tikkanen, Costumer Alterations Anan Barcock, Set Build Miraculous Engineering, Special Effects Motor Stage, Other Scenic Elements J Brown Flooring, Ridiculous Solutions, Lead Producer Hannah Lyall, Executive Producer Steven Atkinson.
Photo Credit: Manuel Harlan
