When Philadelphia-based school teacher Dowd returns to his remote family home in Herber, Arizona, after a 12 year absence with his young wife, he finds things pretty much as they were. Except there is also a surprise, in the shape of 12 year-old little sister called Scarlet, a wild child who roams the deserts, collects animal bones, calls upon Navajo folklore and hates her mother with a vengeance.
You rather wonder why Dowd should return to the place he quite obviously left to for very good reason, but there would be no play if he didn't, and what with the rising summer temperature and the general all-purpose weirdness of his family he is soon sucked back into relationships that offer no escape.
Like Cold Comfort Farm crossed with very bad Sam Shepherd, Lynn Siefert's derivative and dated family drama piles on the heat but is likely to leave you cold in a production that only highlights the play's inadequacies of form and content. Apparently John Malkovich directed the US premiere for the renowned Chicago-based Steppenwolf company, in what was perhaps one of those sweaty, high-octane American productions would ensure that you didn't notice all the terrible crimes the playwright commits against plotting and good writing.
Unfortunately, despite an intriguing design by Max Lewendel and Chris Hone that turns the whole of the playing space into a sandy desert that has encroached on the family house and appears to be reclaiming it for wild nature, the production never finds energy or rhythm, and the performances which are either under-powered or over-active owe more to the suburban British sitting room than the vast deserts of the American psyche.
· Until July 24. Box office: 020-7373 3842.
