Review: Affluenza, Riverside Studios ★★

Affluenza two star review image credit Danny Kaan

In 2013, Texan teen Ethan Couch killed four people while driving under the influence and was spared a harsh sentence when his defence team used the idea of “affluenza” (extreme privilege) to argue that he had no sense of any link between his actions and their consequences. Presumably his mother had not learned that link either, as they later got into further hot water when a video surfaced of him at a party, a likely probation violation, and the pair headed to Mexico.

This story seems ripe for telling on stage. Sadly, Affluenza, now playing at Riverside Studios, tries to tell not only this story but two others, both of which might be interesting in their own right: the generational impact of a parent’s wrongdoing and the emotional impact of being part of a reality TV show. These are three big, meaty topics, and in meshing them together, writer and director Andy Sandberg has given none of them (rather like Couch’s victims) is given effective justice.

Elements of the set work. Scenes with Dylan (the play’s version of Ethan), played by Noah Schnapp, upstairs while the adults discuss him downstairs are effective, and Schnapp captures these teen frustrations and tantrums. He plays two teenagers over the evening: Dylan, and then, after the interval, Dylan’s own son.

Early scenes where Dylan’s parents work with a lawyer seem implausible in their lack of remorse or care for those he has killed. Reading around the case, it seems this was indeed their attitude: if you are rich enough, trouble is something you can pay your way out of. Unfortunately, the scenes do not ring true, even if they are based in fact.

I could find no evidence that the painfully drawn-out scene between the defence lawyer and his wife, questioning the morality of supporting Dylan, ever occurred, and it was awkward to watch. The defence psychologist, Dr G. Dick Miller, who later said he regretted using the term “affluenza”, has no real counterpart in the play. The nearest thing is the lawyer’s wife, herself a psychologist, who says the idea was hers from earlier work rather than anything to do with the trial. Presumably the scene has been added to provide some moral reflection, but it does not succeed. I could not understand what relationship there was between him taking on the case and the couple starting a family.

A cynical scene with a lawyer for one of the victims’ families (an out-of-her-depth Janette Manrara) also sits at a distance from the actual events. She presses the family to settle, her argument framed around money and racism. It has possibly been added to shine a light on the American justice system, but it is hard to know why this had to be fictionalised when the real events were already such a clear example. In reality the families did settle, but a telling moment came in the civil depositions, not shown here, was where Couch and his parents finally spoke under oath after never testifying in the criminal trial. Tonya Couch said she could not remember when she had last disciplined her son. That is perhaps more damning than anything the play invents.

All these frustrations are centred on the first idea, the affluenza defence. There is so much more that could have been explored and examined.

Instead, in the second half, we have a surreal shift into Dylan’s reality TV future, with Dylan now played by Rupert Young. Why this choice was made was hard to fathom. It felt like a bizarre adjunct to what we had just watched. Once the cameraman was lip-synching, we knew for certain that all hope of depth or insight was lost.

Affluenza is a frustrating night at the theatre because such an important premise is squandered. I hope Couch’s victims never see it, because they would likely find the extremes of the reality TV segments a deeply offensive treatment of their story.