Marilyn Monroe is in Albert Einstein's hotel bedroom demonstrating the theory of relativity with the aid of some plastic toys from the Five and Dime store. Her husband, the baseball player Joe DiMaggio, is hammering furiously on the door, and heading their way is Senator Joseph McCarthy, determined that Einstein be forced to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
This clever melding of fact and fiction generates considerable friction in this 1984 play, which first announced the rumbustious talent of Terry Johnson. It is a vastly entertaining and very clever theatrical prank.
Is it more? Well you can hardly say that a play that captures the cold-war confusions of early-1950s America - pondering along the way the difference between truth and knowledge, dreams and reality and the nature of celebrity - is exactly slacking. On the other hand, you can tell that this is an early piece because although it is a firework of surface brilliance and ebullience, it never reaches the psychological or emotional depths of Johnson's later work. It is a calling card, not an emotionally satisfying whole. In part this is a fault of the production and a cast who never quite find that fine line between character and caricature, let alone their accents.
But it is still an enjoyable evening, and we shouldn't complain when work of such high calibre is pouring out of Northampton. You begin to get the drift now of what attracts Northampton's artistic director Rupert Goold: Arcadia, Godot, Paradise Lost. Shows that have an intellectual dazzle yet maintain an emotional strength in their secret hearts. Insignificance lacks that secret heart and proves that sometimes cleverness, charm and manipulation can be more seductive in the theatre than emotional honesty.
· Until May 15. Box office: 01604 624811.
