Wildefire, Hampstead Theatre, review: 'not much cop' With dismaying news just in that the police are failing to record a million crimes every year, Roy Williams's new play about the inner workings of the force arrives in the nick of time to raise high expectations. Has Britain's foremost black playwright got something useful to contribute to the urgent debate about where the boys and girls in blue are going wrong? Sadly, weirdly, not. Though Wildefire allegedly draws on detailed research and we're told that much of what we see was inspired by real accounts, this surprisingly short evening (under 90 minutes straight-through) comes across as the sort of thing that you or I might have rustled up after watching a handful of episodes of The Bill and then knocking back a couple of glasses of plonk. It begins with Sir Robert Peel relaying the Principles of Law Enforcement to the House of Commons in 1829 - placing striking emphasis on the need for consent-based policing. We're then propelled into the rowdy melee of a modern-day South London cop shop. There are nasty football hoodlums to be dealt with, and Don, a battle-hardened sergeant, is trying to keep his subordinates in check too: keen newcomer Gail Wilde (nickname Wildefire), a transfer from relatively rural Horsham, has no sooner arrived than her derriere is being approvingly admired. The stage is set for a plucky female contender taking on the capital's mean streets and unacceptable chauvinism back at base. Lorraine Stanley brings an instant sense of cheeky Cockney charm and level-headed likeability to the role. But barely has she joined her macho-minded partner Spence on the beat than the piece starts to go round the houses, its dramatic focus wandering from a surly gang informant to a domestic abuse victim who refuses offers of help. The issues of ethnic minority policing and women in policing fade, to be superseded by action that seems increasingly spurious: after losing Spence to random violence (there's even a mock-up riot at one point), Gail goes completely off the rails. Beyond being reminded of the frustrations of the job, and the temptation, even the need, to bend the rules to get results, we learn little more than that a policeman's lot is not a happy one. Maria Aberg's very generously populated production struggles to evoke different locations and trades too much on the generic menace of skulking hoodies. The whole thing ends up looking like a box-ticking exercise.