At the Royal Court, during a six-week rehearsal period, playwright Anthony Neilson and his actors created and developed Unreachable from scratch. There was no script. They ended up with a scrappy satire on the movie industry which is much inferior to Charles Wood’s Veterans, a spoof on the making of Tony Richardson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade which was seen many years ago at the Royal Court. It starred John Gielgud (sending himself up) and the then unknown Bob Hoskins as an electrician.
Here, an award-winning film director is attempting to shoot an apocalyptic sci-fi epic, but the production is delayed by his obsessive quest for a mystical perfect light. He has a big ego and is liable to scrap the film and bankrupt the backers. Matt Smith exercises all his charm. Amanda Drew plays his down-to-earth producer and Richard Pryor his ambitious cameraman.
