Spending 10 minutes watching a woman who suffers from a severe obsessive-compulsive disorder attempting to touch a lavatory cistern may not sound like riveting theatre, but I can assure you that, in Tim Stark's fine production of Robert Holman's 1988 play Rafts and Dreams, it is. The Holman oeuvre is being celebrated in style in Manchester, with readings of plays as well as revivals of Across Oka and Rafts and Dreams, two masterpieces of everyday life and wild fantasy whose power lies in their passionate understatement.
In Across Oka, a grand-father's unfulfilled dreams seem about to be realised through his teenage grandson. The drama sees generation rubbing up awkwardly against generation, reality pitted against dreams and freedom against responsibility. Set partly in northern England and partly in a nature reserve in the old Soviet Union, Across Oka not only shows two competing mindsets, but is also a poignant reminder that our children always outgrow us, taking some of our worst - and certainly our best - features with them. It is also a remarkably accurate portrait of a family who, in two postwar generations, leap from the daily struggle to keep body and soul together to public school insouciance and confidence.
Like all Holman plays, it is a slow burn, not a firework. Playwright, director Sarah Frankcom and a terrific cast make you believe every word so that you feel you know these people as intimately as your own family. Eileen O'Brien is simply devastating as a grandmother, jealous of the opportunities afforded her own grandson.
There are more gleaming performances in Rafts and Dreams, a play of desperate optimism and desperate despair that takes place largely on a raft after the polar ice caps have melted and flooded the world. Stark's production strikes the right balance between the absurd, the weirdly dreamy and all-human-life-is-here style soap opera as the protagonists drift over the watery globe in pursuit of themselves, forgiveness, love and the ability to be loved.
It is an extraordinarily painful play to watch but, somehow, it sends you out of the theatre at peace with yourself, as if you've only just realised what a truly wonderful thing our species is in all its warped and damaged humanity.
· In rep until October 18. Box office: 0161-833 9833.
