Royal Lyceum Theatre,
Edinburgh
Three stars
The projection of what
looks like a space storm beamed onto a huge steel-grey drum suggests
that matters of intergalactic importance are about to unfold. As it
is, novelist Ian Rankin's first ever stage play, written with Royal
Lyceum artistic director Mark Thomson, doesn't quite scale those
heights, though there are enough twists and turns in his
Edinburgh-set yarn to keep audiences spellbound.
It opens with a
nightmare, as top cop Isobel McArthur is awoken in her living room by
ghosts from the past she can't shake off. Coming up for retirement,
Isobel declares to write a book about her experiences, with one
particular case from a quarter of a century ago dominating. That was
when a man called Alfred Chalmers was imprisoned for the murders of
four young women. Did he do it? Isobel isn't sure, and visits Alfred
in search of clues. Isobel's sexually voracious teenage daughter
Alexandra, meanwhile, has already begun making inquiries of her own.
The psychological cat
and mouse game that follows is top notch prime time stuff in
Thomson's co-production between the Royal Lyceum and Wales Millennium
Centre, and Rankin fans will adore it even as they dissect every
moment. There's an intelligence at play here that grasps what can be
a hackneyed thriller genre and gives it a contemporary localised
edge. There are shocks aplenty as the tension is racked up on Francis
O'Connor's revolving set, with the scenes between Maureen Beattie's
Isobel and Philip Whitchurch's Alfred electrifying at moments. If the
scrip needs paring down slightly, Rankin and Thomson have
nevertheless produced a gripping piece of tartan noir that thrills
and entertains in equal measure.
The Herald, September 30th 2013
ends
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