Set in a present-day, minimalist house somewhere between well-to-do Hampstead and Highgate, we enter the world of Max Villiers (Matthew Marsh), a ghost writer of semi-literate-celebrity autobiographies, and his wife Harriet (Eleanor David), who has become obsessed with "beautiful things" such as the "semi-antique" rug she has bought. It is Halloween, and they are preparing for a drinks party they have accidentally organised by inviting Imogen (Katherine Parkinson), an old friend of their absent daughter, Anna, who is off being a peace activist "somewhere dangerous". Expected also are proletarian family friend Eddie (Lloyd Hutchinson) and his New Age neurotic date, Jacklyn (Adie Allen), as well as Imogen's po-faced civil servant husband Marcus (Orlando Searle). However, before and during the party, Max is seeing mysterious visions of Anna as a ten-year old on the newly-installed plasma screen he otherwise cannot turn on.

Blending broad comedy with spookiness, The Lightning Play is an easy and enjoyable watch which has a stunning first half and a slightly disappointing second act. Jones has given us a piece which taps into a rich vein of concern about the emptiness of an existence defined by what you possess because what you want or need is out of reach. Working on several levels, it deals with the longing for spirituality, the hopelessness of modern, batty alternatives to its absence, the uncertainty of all moral beliefs, and the difficulty of identity, all within the sugar-coated setting of what is basically a supernatural version of The Good Life 2006.

Great art should seek to tell the truth about its time, but should also entertain. The Lightning Play is certainly one of the most accomplished examples of this maxim I have seen for a while. I was genuinely on the edge of my seat come the interval to find out what the ghostly, Ring-like apparition of the Villiers' absent daughter meant and what further, Halloween-style eeriness lay ahead. That the rest of the play turned into a drunken argument about morality, however inevitably, did rather take something away from the supernatural ambience the writer had so carefully created at the start.

It is entertaining all the same thanks to the depth of the writing and the strong performances. Special mention must be made of Searle's stand-out study in humourlessness as the DEFRA drone, Marcus, and Allen's great neurotic turn as the nutty Jacklyn. While strong actors, however, Marsh and David as the estranged marrieds are, sadly, too nice by half for us to believe in the frost that has settled between them. The brilliant design of the play, from the set to the filmed inserts, also deserves praise, being so central to the piece, while making its transfer to less flexible spaces an interesting challenge for any future artistic directors.

The Lightning Play gives up its dark secrets in carefully controlled, well written and plotted chunks that will make you laugh, tear and slightly shiver. However conventional its form, it is the witty details, the presentation and the handling of the strong themes that make this superior theatre.

  share with:  Facebook | Digg | other sites