Review by Simon Jenner, May 10 2026
★ ★ ★ ★
Vape-cute? Two people meet in an office space: the older man laconically offers advice. It’s like an outer room of Glengarry Glen Ross flown over in a threadbare magic carpet to Farringdon. It’s not Mamet but has fun with him. There’s Pinter-moth-holes in the caffeine-talk. There’s a killing to be made and then, well, forget kills. In a seamless Scene Two there’s flesh to fry and after 75 minutes you don’t even know what room your skin’s in. Andrew King’s Vapists! is directed at the Lantern Studio till May 10 by King and co-actor Sacha Cooper, assisted by Lauren Attalah.
The set is mostly talk, the Lantern’s bare stage strewn with few props, and it’s Ewan MacQuire-Plows’ lighting and sound with Roger Mason’s use of Windows and recordings from the Gay Disco Project, that craft a hallucinatory envelope. King also produces and supplies artwork for Farringdon Present-ish.
A. W. King and Sascha Cooper in Vapists! Photo Credit: Peter Williams
King, or A.W. King is laconic older Graham, Sascha Cooper is Matt, and in the second scene there’s Carl Anderson: who’s mostly offstage as Oaf shouting obscenities (and told in unison to f off); and who finally apparates as “Him”. With a helmet.
Mood and lighting darken. The first scene of over 40 minutes is realist with gaps. Graham’s been at this organisation a long time; Matt only four weeks. Matt’s anxious to learn, and Graham, who could choose to hinder, instead helps; with periodic grouches.
Matt, knowing precarity and Generation Rent, has to make a sale: here it’s broker over 40 rooms to a German hotelier. It’s sexier if you hit them with figures: they love that. Anderson’s the voice-off, but the curious dramaturgy is that, after all the badinage between two principal actors, through vape questions (Graham has a luxury one and peach is so past-it), Cooper goes offstage for her kill. It’s quite innovative, especially for a show of this intimacy. King’s Graham nods and enthuses, or furrows brows. Matt though is good and surprises Graham with moves he’d not think they’d think of making. A reward.
Characters are gestured at. A shadowy CEO; or one Eric who always tells you what you might want to hear. The dust is thronged with motes of pod-people, if the sun shone in. Which it doesn’t. We’re in some shut-in space in Farringdon. No, Graham lives in Acton. He’d not choose to rent here. Matt’s wife – “girlfriend” Matt corrects him – is at a party, but Matt might be late too.
The shift when it comes is both shadowy and disturbed. The two now appear in nothing but dressing-gowns, kind of. They’ve been to a jacuzzi after some celebratory team drinks with the rest. Are they alone? There’s a foul-mouthed Oaf or someone functioning like a desk manager; whom they both tennis-ball back abuse at, in unison. Good they’ve something in common, since things begin unravelling. Feints are made. Rohypnol? Surely not. No, it’s no seduction. Graham’s not interested in any kind of woman. “Been there. Done that. Got the bruises” might be a feint bruise of its own. But brokering now. There’s a thing.
What’s offered, what’s taken and who’s already suffering – Matt takes a call – is more complex than Scene One. Making a killing here has mansions. And many moons in them. How might Matt scope the world, and if necessary, break free? And is Graham truly free? That third character might beam down at any time. The fact we have one doing so and so late, is even more daring than have Cooper speak offstage, but audibly, and engrossingly too.
Sascha Cooper and A. W. King in Vapists! Photo Credit: Peter Williams
Cooper’s consummate, funny and querulous Matt is a delight. It takes her away from the Cooper known for comedy and murder into a vein of dark where she gleams. It proves she stretches easily to serious roles. Here it’s off-beat, comedic noir and I’d love to see more of it.
King with every flicker of his face – he’s often still and poised – is absolute. In an intimate space he knows restraint: a minimal eyebrow is enough. Sloughing his writer’s skin he exposes Graham’s nerve like a filament lit from inside. Quietly garish, apparently controlling. His carapace is poised for a thwack. Anderson’s presence and voice is satisfyingly leathered.
Shades of Pinter’s The Homecoming ripple through the latter part of Vapists!; just as more diffused Pinter studs elements of Glengarry Glen Ross and even Speed-the-Plow inflecting the earlier scene. Dialogue is supremely crafted, elliptical, worthy of the individual voice it inhabits. Writing typical of a really intelligent actor who gets dialogue from the inside, and enjoys a career appearing in e.g. the Donmar and RSC. King’s master of his own idiom: clipped, funny, laconically generous, absorbingly contemporary. There’s references from everything through information theory, corporate-speak, the atmosphere of Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism (the antidote to Mamet-speak); the scene.
King’s challenge is to marry the noirish comic disturbances of the second part to the first’s more overt (if elliptical) realism. It’s not absurdism, and the theme’s unified: selling everything. The psychology though needs tricking out. The self-delightings in the second half after certain shocks aren’t quite truthfully handled. There’s too swift a transition to King’s comfort-zone: ironic shrugs of sex and insensitivity. And one reveal shrouded enough for me to miss. Not that it matters, even if it proves aspects of one person. It’s how it presents and to that degree doesn’t matter dramatically, and doesn’t change the story.
Vapists!’ smartnesss is telegraphed in exchanges like this – a valedictory discussion of colleagues: “What’s his real name?” “Calvin.”… “Surnames aren’t a thing any more… Poor shuffling Queen with a two bar fire…”
“The Loud girl? Toothless in a doorway. Coke habit. Abusive road men. A criminal record.”“Eric?” “He’ll wake up dead covered in money.”
“What about us?” “More choices. More ways to fuck it up.”
Two words. Indulgent? Yes. Riveting? Absolutely, and the cleverest piece of new writing I’ve seen at the Fringe this year. Though not quite the most realised. If I were Graham, or particularly Matt, I might knock on the author with four other offstage characters and demand a Pirandello-esque tweak. One explaining a bit more of them to themselves. In lightning strokes. And I very much want to see what King writes next.
Lighting and Tech Ewan MacQuire-Plows, Producer and Artwork Andrew King.
Carl Anderson, Sascha Cooper and A. W. King in Vapists! Photo Credit: Peter Williams