In the Mississippi Delta you learn to play blues by going down to the crossroads at midnight and waiting for the devil to tune your guitar. In the Home Counties you learn to play blues by listening to the records. "I went down to the roundabout" doesn't have quite the same ring.
In Stephen Jeffreys' play, Jesse Davidson, a penurious blues legend from the deep south, comes face to face with Karl, a cosseted rock star from Surrey. Karl has made a fortune playing Jesse's music; Jesse is so obscure he's been presumed dead for over a decade. Karl proposes to coax him out of retirement, but finds a sanctimonious old soak who refuses to play ball, let alone guitar.
Jeffreys' play, seen here in its regional premiere, raises pertinent questions about artistic birthright and cultural exploitation, beautifully summed up in Jesse's sardonically improvised Stockbroker Belt Blues: "Down in Surrey I have to work so hard/I break stocks all day and plant lobelias in the yard".
A third character, Jesse's daughter Della, overcomplicates matters. Her entanglement with a black militant movement adds an important political dimension, but also makes for a long evening. Mark Babych's production seems to exist in blues time - it takes a while to get going, but once it finds a groove it threatens to carry on all night.
The performances have great, down-home veracity, however. Wyllie Longmore's haunting Jesse genuinely seems to have a hellhound on his trail, while James Clyde's Karl has a busload of groupies and accountants on his. Best of all, when Karl finally plucks Jesse's guitar from the wall and sings Robert Johnson's Me and the Devil, it no longer feels like callow opportunism - for three spellbinding minutes, Jeffreys' play is unquestionably the real thing.
· Until October 15. Box office: 01204 520661.
