By Robert Bain

We don’t get to learn much about the taxi driver we accompany throughout Hellcab, but we all know exactly how he feels. It’s a familiar character in a familiar set-up: the cold, tired worker slogging through his last shift on Christmas Eve, before clocking off for the festive break.

Dressed in an unbuttoned plaid shirt over a T-shirt, our driver is every bit the standard straightforward good guy, not too warm on the outside, but with a heart underneath it all. He’s such an everyman, in fact, that we don’t even get to know his name.

The play, which opened last week at The Old Red Lion in Islington, is a series of short snippets in which our likeable driver takes a selection of the weird and wonderful people of Chicago to their destinations. We hear a whole string of conversations kick off with the same banal comments about the weather and the basketball game, then head off in bizarre, funny and disturbing directions.

These are convincing slices of the dark side of life, and, this being Christmas, there’s a generous helping of drink, drugs and sex. The other cast members rise to the challenge of playing a whole host of roles each, with minimal costume changes. Sarah Lowes is especially memorable in several different guises, including two different lawyers and a drunk who insists she’s in love with the driver.

Hellcab is largely played for laughs, but it’s also realistic enough for the serious moments to ring true, thanks to Paul Constantine’s immaculate performance as the driver.

In the motley selection of passengers, we see all extremes of city life, but we don’t really see anything we haven’t seen before. Freaks they may be, but these are familiar freaks. We all know that there’s drugs, crime, racism and debauchery in the world, and while Hellcab portrays it faithfully, it lacks that spark of originality to lift it from amusing to hilarious, or from sharp to truly thought-provoking.

Although the driver’s experiences come together to form a journey of sorts, most of the characters come and go within five minutes, so it’s up to Constantine to hold things together.

Fortunately he pulls this off easily, with a sardonic wit lurking beneath that world-weary exterior. Some of the funniest moments come when the cab is empty and we get to see him talking to himself and pulling faces in the rear view mirror. “Why does everything have to be so fucked up?” he asks himself at one point, before declaring resignedly: “I drive a cab for Satan.”

Taking place almost entirely in the scruffy taxi interior that forms the set, Hellcab manages to build up a surprisingly Christmassy atmosphere. We can almost see the driver’s breath in the cold wintry air, and his tiredness and anticipation of the end of his shift are palpable throughout.


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The play fancies itself as an alternative to the usual “saccharine-soaked” festive fare, and its portrayal of life is certainly unflinchingly, with nothing omitted or sanitised. But look through the gritty realism and you’ll see we’re actually in very safe territory.

The central character is well written and well played, but he can’t really be said to have any more edge than your average fairytale hero. In fact he could not be purer. We have seen this character at the centre of countless “feelgood” movies, usually played by Tom Hanks, and we know that he’ll say and do all the right things.

In the last few scenes things take a serious turn and, from this string of unrelated episodes emerges some sort of conclusion, and some sort of message. While it may be done in a “dark” and “gritty” way, we know as soon as the driver switches on the radio to hear “Let it snow” that Hellcab has the same sentiment as any other Christmas play.

If this isn’t saccharine then it’s not because the sweetness isn’t there – it’s just that it isn’t artificial.

Hellcab continues at The Old Red Lion Theatre from Tuesday to Saturday 7.30pm until 31 December. Saturday matinees at 3pm. £12 / £10.