Spirituality seems to be replacing sex as this year's theatrical topic. Hot on the heels of Jez Butterworth's The Night Heron we now have David Farr's Night of the Soul which also deals with sacrifice and redemption.
But, while Farr's RSC production boasts two fine performances, it wraps up its metaphysical message in a convoluted form.
Farr's setting is a south coast town where Francis, a market researcher, has returned for his father's funeral. Although Francis suffered a serious rupture with his dad, his mother begs him to read a funeral oration, implying reconciliation.
But in his fashionably antiseptic hotel Francis is supernaturally solicited by a spirit called Joanna who takes the form of a chambermaid.
To cut a long story short, Joanna, who suffocated her baby in the plague of 1350, can only be released from purgatory if she can find a modern man who also has a sin he has not confessed.
Some things Farr does well. The satire on the kind of newly-built hotel that prides itself on being part of "local heritage" is accurate and just. And the domestic scenes where Francis guiltily confronts his mother and anguished sister have a painful honesty.
But the core of the play resides in the relationship of Francis and Joanna and that makes me uneasy on several counts.
For a start, Farr seems torn between comedy and catharsis. On one level, he treats the encounter between Francis and Joanna as a replay of Blithe Spirit in that only the hero can see the ghost: on another level, he is in deadly earnest.
But the notion that Francis represents some modern equivalent of the black death strikes me as preposterous. In reality, he is an unreconstructed Thatcherite businessman who believes that life is based on self-interest and who has behaved atrociously to his father.
I deplore these things as much as Farr but to deduce from that that we are living in a time of plague is somewhat excessive.
There even seems something dated about Farr's attack on eighties selfish materialism. Hasn't he noticed that times have changed? The result is an odd play that seems to have shopped around too widely for its ideas.
But Farr the director redeems many of the failings of Farr the writer. For a start his production, well designed by Angela Davies who creates just the right kind of hellishly anonymous hotel, has a high-gloss finish.
Tom Mannion expertly conveys the inner emptiness of a hero who is more adept at handling focus groups than his own emotional life. Zoe Waites has exactly the right urgency as the trapped and solitary spirit.
And there is firm support from Hattie Morahan as a robotic receptionist and Cherry Morris as Francis's self-deluding mum.
But, although the play is stylishly done, its central premise simply seems Farr-fetched.
· Until May 11. Box office: 020-7638 8891.
