I am always a little suspicious of green-fingered plays: as with Bagnold's The Chalk Garden or Fugard's A Lesson from Aloes, the horticultural symbolism tends to dominate the action. But although Claire Luckham's Blackbird sometimes sounds like a paean to peonies, it is redeemed by its innovative use of David Lyon's 11 songs, which turn it into a kind of garden-opera.
Luckham's plot has a traditional feel in that death leads to a dispute over physical and emotional ownership. After Mike, a London florist, has gone to the great garden centre in the sky, his wife and mistress lock horns in one of his outlying nurseries. At first our sympathies are with the mistress, Rosemary, who has developed a new form of peony with the two-timing florist. But gradually we come to see the viewpoint of the ailing wife, Fiona, confronted not only by her husband's bastard offspring but by the evidence that his real emotional life lay in the nursery.
Other works constantly come to mind. The battle between wife and mistress evokes Hare's The Breath of Life, and the characters' tendency to burst into song initially suggests we might be in for Peonies from Heaven. But Luckham widens the thematic territory by introducing a Kurdish refugee who has benefited from Mike's altruism and a local man for whom peonies are largely a source of profit. The use of Lyon's songs, scored for piano, cello and clarinet, allows us a glimpse of the characters' inner lives and transforms a conventional play into a challenging piece of music theatre.
Celebrating Southwark Playhouse's 10th anniversary, Jane Howell's production is also cast to the hilt. Juliet Alderdice, the theatre's co-founder, lends Rosemary a fine, escalating fury, while Tilly Tremayne as the wife, discovering her husband's true passion, displays an understandable and touching peonies-envy. Anatol Yusef as the resilient refugee and Neil McCaul as the property-hungry neighbour lend crisp support. The notion that nurseries prove the continuity of nature may be familiar, but the use of introspective song elevates a decent Radio 4 play into a beguiling chamber-opera.
Until June 28. Box office: 020-7620 3494.
