Hope Has a Happy Meal (NHB Modern Plays)

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I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show at The Royal Court with a weak cast, and Hope has a Happy Meal is no different. The playtext has subtle references to the long tradition of new writing, by Caryl Churchill, Sarah Kane and Simon Stephens — as well more recent plays by Alistair McDowall and Rory Mullarkey. Bread Ahead may be most famous for scrumptious, and incredibly Instagram friendly, doughnuts, but also has a incredible variety of top notch bread and pastries on offer. The People’s Republic of Koka Kola is a dystopian capitalist cess pit – a country which used to be a democracy and is now dominated by the most powerful brands representing the most extreme form of capitalism. The central image of a quest by assorted misfits who, despite some bouts of bad temper or depression, are shown to be good people (more or less) suggests the play’s politics of small-scale resistance.

Early on in the 90-minute runtime, their journey feels like a cross between ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ and ‘The Wizard of Oz’ – a sort of fantastical secular allegory for the world we’re essentially living in now. You will be pleased to know that McDonald’s is referenced about a hundred times, though the Happy Meal toy is never realised. The second half is a skip through the months living together in the commune, dealing with humorous practicalities of keeping a hostage in the basement (someone’s got to empty the bucket), and watching Hope rekindle her frosty sisterly relationship with Lor. I really like the way that Fowler parodies the banal pronouncements of those in power, and his evident sympathy for the marginalized and the needy. Amaka Okafor’s Lor is convincingly passionate, and the women are well supported by Nima Taleghani’s Ali and Felix Scott’s Wayne.

A surreal and frenetic quest through a hyper-capitalist country, Tom Fowler's play Hope has a Happy Meal premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in June 2023, directed by Lucy Morrison, in a co-production with SISTER. However, there is an underlying unease in this hyper-capitalist world, and a lurking menace that threatens the lives of all of Hope’s companions. Laura Checkley’s Hope and Mary Malone’s Isla are nicely contrasting characters, and the early comic scenes are the strongest in the play. Felix Scott is hilarious as the smooth talking Koka Kola Airlines captain, who multi-roles as Wayne the murderous cop (Wayne incidentally gets a national holiday in his name by the end of the play). Hope (Laura Checkley) tells a long joke about a frustrated angel caught up in heavenly bureaucracy to the person sitting next to her on her flight.

The reveal to Hope’s backstory isn’t as interesting as the shenanigans that preceded it, and we never discover what has motivated her to come back at this particular moment. Laura Checkley’s charismatic protagonist makes a delightful pairing with Mary Malone’s Isla as the two negotiate a feverish escape involving train toilets and unlikely underground resistance volunteers, picking up a depressed but terribly sweet forest ranger (Nima Taleghani) along the way. She dominates scenes in the most unsuspecting of ways, empathy and sincerity etched across her face.That’s absolutely fine, by the way, but I can’t help feeling that with characters this strong and a story this interesting, it might be a small, missed opportunity.

Nevertheless, Fowler never loses his finely tuned sense of humour, leavening out the more overwrought moments with a welcome wryness. That the characters live in an ultra-capitalist society where all landscapes and landmarks have been bought by conglomerates has no real bearing on the plot, except when characters get to say silly place names like Disney Quarry, Samsung Central and Nike International. Disney Quarry, Facebook Forest, and BP Nature Reserve all feature on her surreal, tragic, and redemptive journey via Koka Kola Railways. Hope is helped not only by Isla, but also by a random train passenger, a trucker and of course by Ali.Mary Malone is sweetness personified as Isla the new surrogate mother for her murdered sister’s son. With some well-judged cameo characters also providing heightened jabs at the slick emptiness of the service industry, played by the cast in sometimes triple duty (including a particularly versatile Felix Scott), Fowler’s playfully dark humour hits the spot. At the very least you will have a brilliant couple of hours of theatrical entertainment with clowns, knives, guns, beautifully raw emotional dialogue, great performances, and some exquisite nightclub dancing.