The debut play by Mark Haddon, whose novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time won the Whitbread Prize, takes mental health as its theme, and for its structure the time-jumping patchwork of events with which the mind compiles a memory.
And as no event is remembered in the sequence in which it happened, Haddon begins at the end with a disorientating scene in which philosopher John (Richard Coyle) confesses that he has just killed Sandy's troubled sister Kay (Jodhi May). The following uninterrupted 90-minutes are spent piecing together the events that led up to the death. Anyone who has seen the movie 21 Grams will know how effective non-linear storytelling can be, but it only works when the question posed by each out-of-context scene is eventually answered by the whole. And Haddon's patchwork leaves questions frustratingly unanswered.
Jamie Lloyd's production is anchored by fine performances, particularly May as the presumably bi-polar Kay whose mood lurches from life-affirming to life-denying. But the play fails in what was probably Haddon's prime objective – to mirror the character's condition in a shattered structure. There is little to learn by piecing together the shards. (Tel: 0844 871 7624)