What does Raoul Moat play Manhunt say about men in 2025?
Angry, isolated and dangerous men are very much in the cultural zeitgeist and, in Raoul Moat, visionary writer-director Robert Icke has chosen one of the angriest, most isolated and demonstrably dangerous men in recent memory as the subject of his new play.
Manhunt – very loosely based on the 2016 true crime book You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat] – follows the last days of Geordie bodybuilder Moat as he murders his ex-girlfriend and her new partner with a sawn-off shotgun, declares war on Northumbria police, shoots and blinds an unarmed officer and camps out in the woods before eventually killing himself.
It was a media story unlike any other, perhaps the closest the UK has come to an OJ Simpson moment. Survivalist Ray Mears was called in to help track down Moat during the unprecedented manhunt. Football player Paul Gascoigne turned up pissed during the final stand-off carrying cans of lager, chicken and a fishing rod, hoping to reason with him man-to-man. Icke may be best known for his soaring, ultra-modern takes on classic plays from Oedipus to The Wild Duck but you can see why this source material might have appealed.
True to form, this is a production filled with theatrical flourishes. We meet Moat pacing around a prison cell, where he is also filmed from above, the video footage beamed onto a gauze in front of the stage, his bald head pinging around the stage like a game of Pong. One moment the theatre lights might come up, bringing the audience into the action, the next we’re blinded by a flash of white. In one memorable scene, the lights go out entirely as we are placed inside the world of blinded policeman David Rathband.
It’s a bizarrely structured play, largely told through the lens of a trial that never happened, in which Moat’s entire life is dissected by dispassionate judges, social workers and policemen. By the time we meet Moat in 2010, the walls are already closing in. He was accused of assaulting his young daughter, was being tailed by police, and a legion of landlords and lawyers were bearing down upon him. Throw in a damaged childhood, chronic steroid use and a shady past and you have a pressure cooker ready to explode.
Into the fray steps Samuel Edward-Cook (Player Kings, Antigone) as Moat. He looks every inch the roided-out brute but also captures the intelligence and charisma that made him such a fascinating figure. He’s genuinely frightening, forever on the cusp of losing not only his temper but his mind.
There are some great supporting turns too: a young Moat dealing with his abusive, bi-polar mother; the bodiless voice of Rathband as he struggles in the wake of his attempted murder, gains national fame, has an ill-advised affair that’s splashed across the tabloids and eventually takes his own life. But the most touching scene of all is when Icke imagines what might have happened had the police allowed Gazza through the cordon. Played by Trevor Fox, Gazza is a mirror of Moat, directionless and angry, raging against a system he believes has failed him and seeking refuge in substance abuse.
Icke obliquely addresses the present masculinity crisis: “All men are cockroaches now,” snarls Moat, wondering what might happen if 100 more like him were to take arms. But in the end the character feels too distinct a case to make much of a meaningful comment on the problems of 2025. Moat just feels like a one-off. But in Edward-Cook’s blistering, terrifying, harrowing performance, we at least have an early contender for next year’s Olivier Awards.
• Manhunt is on now at the Royal Court theatre