Interview review: A thrilling game of Kat and mouse
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| By
Sian McBride
Texts, social media alerts, phone calls and voice notes ping on to the white brickwork of the ‘Kat Cave’, Katya’s fashionable New York apartment. Her world is dominated, and her worth defined, by these notifications. They tower over her on the walls of her home, inserting themselves into her inner sanctum. Wherever she is they follow her, and she must be prepared. After all, ‘if you lose the narrative, you lose the leverage.’
Adapted from the 2003 Dutch film, Interview follows Katya, an influencer turned actress, and Pierre, a war correspondent turned reluctant entertainment journalist, as they spar, seduce and scheme their way toward the truth (or at least their version of it).
It is the first time this story has been brought to the stage, and it feels more urgent here than on screen. Katya’s entire existence already plays out as a performance, so to watch her command an actual stage blurs the line between life and theatre even further. Updating the 22-year-old story to the digital age sharpens the script to a killer point. When the film premiered, Facebook was a year away, Twitter three, Instagram seven. Now, Katya can reach her followers in a heartbeat via Instagram Live. Unlike before, every half-truth or slip of the tongue risks instant exposure and cancellation.
Robert Sean Leonard gives Pierre a grizzled weariness. He has seen too much of the world to be dazzled by celebrity, and dismisses Katya and her world instantly. He quickly informs her that “reach doesn’t equal worth” and “mass doesn’t equal merit” when she states she must be good at something if millions of people follow her. Yet beneath his cynicism lies a man scarred by professional and personal failure. He sneers at Katya’s world, but his own has crumbled. He is as desperate for redemption as she is for respect.
Paten Hughes, meanwhile, plays Katya with skilled versatility. She is constantly underestimated, but she knows how to use it to her advantage. Men mistake her confidence for shallowness, but she can read them faster than they skim the headlines about her. One moment she’s dishing out sarcastic quips, the next she’s in near tears, revealing something surprisingly sincere.
The tension between the two is a constant push-pull: predator and prey, interviewer and interviewee, truth-teller and fabricator. The fun lies in not knowing who is which at any given moment. Their power play is laced with seduction, deception, and a steady drip of revelations. Pierre wants an exclusive to claw his way back into the pages of serious journalism. Katya wants the power to control and edit her own story, and to be taken seriously as an actor rather than a tabloid punchline. Both want honesty from the other, but neither dares to give it first.
By the time confessions are live-streamed across Katya’s walls, the audience is left wondering not just who to believe, but who they want to believe.
Robert Sean Leonard and Paten Hughes are perfectly matched in a battle of words that keeps the audience hooked until the final line. Smart, unsettling, and engrossing, it’s a performance worth watching - and that’s the truth…
Interview plays at Riverside Studios until 27 September 2025