The Maddening Rain

In "The Maddening Rain," British playwright Nicholas Pierpan sets out to portray the life of a 21st-century London Everyman. In this one-man show, the portrait is full-length, detailing a frenetic rise and fall, taking our Everyman (he's never given a name) from high school to young manhood. Pierpan asks us to witness the journey of yet another modern man in grave danger of losing his soul. The energy that drives our Everyman's story is a kind of class rage (that ever-loving subject of class still being the engine that fuels so much of British drama). While sections of this tale are intriguing, there are also some rather rough patches, and the playwright is indeed lucky to have actor Felix Scott to disguise these bumps with a dynamic performance that is brimming with life.

Everyman went to school in Leicester but came to London, where he has had a series of jobs, from bowling-alley attendant to banker. He runs into an old school pal, Will, who works at the leading accounting firm of Deloitte, and Will secures him a gopher job at a major securities firm. Thus begins Everyman's ambitious climb. When Will is suddenly murdered by some hooligans, Everyman returns to Leicester for the funeral. Here he meets the two women whom he will pursue: Zoe, a co-worker of Will's, and Sarah, an old girlfriend from school. At work, he rescues his immediate boss, Andy, from a disastrous trade of many millions, and suddenly doors swing open. Having achieved the secret garden, Everyman's moral worth is put to the test.

The playwright makes the stock-trading scenes convincingly treacherous, but in his anti-hero's fall from grace, Pierpan allows his tale to get out of hand; it spirals downward into awkward melodrama. The play's one prop is a large metal wrench, which also stands for the wrench that the play's plotting suddenly takes. The title is an overreach for symbolic significance, referring to a story Will wrote in school of a medieval fable in which rain turned people into mad, flesh-eating cannibals. And by the end of play, guess what? It's raining again.

On Alison McDowall's effective set of venetian blinds and lights and under Matthew Dunster's crisp direction, Scott imbues the play with an energy that never flags. His accent is just right and his anger ever on the boil as he makes this anti-hero almost likable. New York welcomes the talented Scott as part of the Brits Off Broadway festival.

Presented by Darbourne Luff and Upstart Theatre as part of Brits Off Broadway at 59E59 Theaters, 59 E. 59th St., NYC. Nov. 6–20. Schedule varies. (212) 279-4200 or www.ticketcentral.com.