Vernon God Little - TNT

I couldn't get to grips with DBC Pierre's 2003 Man Booker prize-winner, and it seems I wasn't alone — it topped a recent survey of "unfinishable" novels. But Tanya Ronder's stage adaptation grabs one's attention right from the start as 15-year-old Texan misfit schoolboy Vernon is questioned about his part in a mass shooting that wiped out his classmates. Wrongly accused of being an accomplice, Colin Morgan's Vernon battles against the preconceptions of a mother (Joanna Scanlan) who has more affection for her new fridge than for her son, a perverted psychiatrist, a police force determined to find him guilty, and the scoop-hungry media which (in the shape of Mark Lockyer's smarmy, manipulative Lally) twists the truth to gain a prime slot. The characters are straight out of Jerry Springer — larger than life and exaggerated to the point of parody — but there's such energy and underlying humanity in Rufus Norris's economically designed production of this biting, black, satirical comedy that I may just give the book another go.
Young Vic, The Cut, SE1, 020-7922 2922 Until 9th June

LOUISE KINGSLEY