Writer and Director: Marc Blake  

We’re on a private island owned by a billionaire who collects world-famous art. Rising Black artist Joan has a residency set up by the collector’s agent, David. Then a museum curator arrives with an important painting to sell. The play builds up – rather as Act 2 of The Mikado does –  to the arrival of the Great Man and his American wife Vanessa. Then the painting disappears during a thunderstorm, and that’s the central mystery of what is essentially a whodunit without a murder.

For a long time, it feels like a pretty predictable comedy of manners – Joan’s forthright gor-blimey ones contrasting with everyone else’s. She gets the funniest lines, and Oyinka Yusuff delivers them with aplomb. There are, however, some unexpected plot twists in the final third. These are totally implausible in view of what has gone before, but they trigger audience gasps and chuckles.

Alan Drake is strong as the exasperated, long-suffering dealer (who turns out to be something completely different) and Jon Horrocks is convincing as the authoritarian collector accustomed to having his own way in everything – until, inevitably, the tide turns against him. Jeremy Vinogradov is pleasing as the humourless museum curator. Naomi Bowman, however, isn’t persuasive as Vanessa with her high-pitched American whine – not quite right for her Virginian provenance and is often inaudible.

The most interesting aspect of Private View is the questions it asks about the value of art. Its real value surely has nothing to do with money, as Yusuff’s character tries to assert. It is not an argument which is fully developed, and that’s a missed opportunity.

Mark Blake’s debut play has an oddly old-fashioned feel despite the mobile phones and occasional “fuck”. It runs 90 minutes and doesn’t need its interval. It should be a straight-through play.

Moreover, the scene changes are clumsy, and that effect is worsened by an unfortunate audience decision on the opening night to applaud, 1950s-style, every time characters leave the stage and there’s hesitant presumption of a scene change.

And it’s time Greenwich Theatre did something about the sight lines (a polite misnomer) from the back row of its studio theatre. The stage is virtually invisible. Many school halls are better.

Runs until 15 November 2025