Enlightenment *** TNT
Programming at the Hampstead theatre has been somewhat hit and miss in recent years, so hopes are high that incoming artistic director Edward Hall will turn things round and restore its former reputation as a first class off West End venue. Unfortunately, his inaugural production fails to live up to expectations, a double pity as playwright Shelagh Stephenson has a proven track record as a writer of intelligent, witty and thought provoking drama.
The premise is promising enough – backpacking 20 year old Adam has been missing for 6 months since the Jakarta bombings and his academic step-father Nick and mother Lia crave proof, one way or the other, of the fate of her missing son.
Although the opening scene - with a not very funny psychic - doesn’t ring true in the context of their pristine middleclass household, the desperate anguish of Julie Graham’s Lia certainly does. So one can just about buy her reluctant decision to get involved with Daisy Beaumont’s unscrupulously persistent TV programme maker (who’s more caricature then credible) in a last ditch attempt to trace him. But one loses patience with Lia’s prolonged indulgence of the amnesiac (and increasingly disturbing) cuckoo in the nest who meets them at the airport, and, whilst moderately entertaining, this psychological thriller fails to live up to its more profound (and only partially integrated) aspirations.
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