Mood Music review – Joe Penhall's clash of the hitmakers

Old Vic, London A row over intellectual property is at the heart of a fascinating and topical drama starring Ben Chaplin and Seána KerslakeJoe Penhall is very good at showing how a crisis can be exacerbated by the intervention of experts. In Blue/Orange (2000), a black mental patient became a ping-pong ball in a game between white doctors. In this fascinating and highly topical new play, a conflict over ownership of a song escalates once the legal and psychiatric parasites enter the arena. Switching between consulting rooms and a recording studio and moving around in time, Penhall doesn’t just give us a contest: he demonstrates the illusion that any piece of art has untainted solo authorship. Cat is a Dublin-born singer-songwriter who has had a big hit that led to an American tour. Bernard is the artist-producer who put an album together with songs by the pair of them. Battle is joined over Bernard’s claim of sole credit for the hit single, but we see how the conflict is intensified as both parties resort to lawyers and seek to sort out their problems through psychotherapy. Continue reading…
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