As they say in the classics, “we’re getting the band back together!” Legendary rockers Riflemind are staging a reunion, if they can survive the experience of rehearsing together for the first time in years. Lead singer John (Hugo Weaving) and his partner Lynn (Susan Prior) are hosting fellow band members in their country mansion for the weekend. Moon (Steve Rodgers), Phil (Marton Csokas) and newcomer Lee (Ewen Leslie) have packed plenty of emotional baggage for the rural getaway. Completing the entourage are Phil’s partner Cindy (Susie Porter) and band manager Sam (Jeremy Sims).

Of course for a reunion such as this there are going to be clashes of egos and unresolved tensions that, in the best rock ‘n’ roll tradition, will be unsuccessfully suppressed for a short amount of time before erupting in spectacular fashion. Director Philip Seymour Hoffman picks up on the rhythms embedded in this dynamic, ensuring that the pop-song structure of the play (verses building up to climactic choruses) is maintained. The set is a little unimaginative, but the bursts of Riflemind music between scenes (featuring a couple of members of The Hard Ons) are great and help to give the play a little aural context.

The actors slip easily into their grungy personas. Weaving maintains the surly air of someone in perpetual need of a kebab and a couple of Beroccas. Prior’s Lynn is excruciating in her nervousness, and Porter as Cindy gets the most audience sympathy for being relatively sane. Jeremy Sims is fantastic as Sam; boorish and rude, with a chronic case of foot-in-mouth. It’s a shame there wasn’t more time devoted to Sam, as the character really enlivened the play.

Upton is very good at sketching out characters. Very good indeed. His dialogues are carefully modelled on natural patterns of speech, with sentences trailing off or being overridden by others. In this he is clearly a disciple of Pinter. Each character is driven by a particular sort of energy that sparks off the tensions of the others; Sam’s ill-concealed air of desperation, Lynn’s nervous politeness, and so on. They are very authentic.

The problem is that, having carefully drawn his characters, Upton then dips them in quick-drying concrete. There doesn’t seem to be much progression in the way of character development or plot. Revelations are made through monologues that don’t sit well stylistically with the dialogues. By the end I felt like I had just spent a couple of hours watching a group of mildly unpleasant people yelling at each other. I felt that I would have been able to engage with the characters more if Upton had just let something, anything, happen. Riflemind is a good play; it could be so much better if the characters were required to do more than just spin their wheels.