Just occasionally a show comes along that seems to capture the moment, its preoccupations and obsessions. Edith Olivier's novel was written in 1927 and is now out of print. In this adaptation by Lavinia Murray for Red Shift theatre company, however, it seems startlingly modern in its examination of both the consequences for women of childlessness and the way that successful motherhood means that the mother must learn to let her child grow up and leave her.
There are shades of Henry James's ghost stories here and also a touch of an inverse Peter Pan. At its best the evening invokes both - as well as the sense of a fingernail run very lightly up your spine, or an elusive figure glimpsed out of the corner of your eye in the mirror.
As a lonely only child, Agatha Bodenham had an invisible friend. Following the death of her mother, she is left alone in the world after her fiance perishes in the last days of the Great War - and it is then that her invisible friend reappears. Agatha christens her Clarissa and adopts her. From the audience's point of view, there are several interesting things about the scenario: for one, if Clarissa is merely a figment of Agatha's imagination, why does everybody see her? The production supplies some clues in the spiritualist background of the affluent Bodenham family, and develops the idea further as Clarissa grows up and begins to try to separate from Agatha, who cannot let her go.
Red Shift is a company working on a small scale that has been around for almost 20 years. This unsettling, spiky, deliciously entertaining little show is a triumphant reminder of why the company has survived so long. I certainly don't subscribe to the idea that starving in a garret is good for artists, but sometimes necessity is the mother of invention - as shown here in Jonathan Holloway's clever direction, Neil Irish's cunning designs and Jon Nicholls's evocative music. Very enjoyable, but impossible for any woman, whether childless or a mother, to watch without squirming uncomfortably in her seat.
· At Farnham Maltings Arts Centre (01252 726234) on Tuesday. Then touring across the UK until December 19.
