Tanya Fear, Niall Bishop and Eva-Jane Willis in Tiny Dynamite. Photograph: The Other Richard
Every year Luce (Eva-Jane Willis) takes the homeless Anthony (Niall Bishop) away on holiday. The pair are bound by a childhood experience involving an electrical storm, and by a more recent tragedy in which the woman they both loved died. But who is the more damaged? The risk-averse Luce or the more obviously mentally fragile Anthony? When the pair meet Madeleine (Tanya Fear) it seems as if lightning might strike twice.
Abi Morgan’s fractured love story premiered at the Edinburgh festival in 2001. Vicky Featherstone was at the helm and Frantic Assembly’s Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett were in the cast. It was electrifying stuff, not least for Morgan’s delicate and elliptical storytelling but also for the unforced way it melded new writing with choreography, making it a significant signpost for theatre’s collaborative future.
The play has been neglected for too long, and it is a bold decision to revive it in a tiny space, well served as it is by Anna Reid’s design, which features hidden secrets and a watery grave. David Loumgair’s production, which neatly recasts one character as a woman, is sometimes a mite too flashy for a play of such unassuming but richly layered sensitivity. He also crashes the growing tension with an interval.
The actors have some fine moments, but wavering accents are an issue, and a lack of warmth sometimes makes the characters seem less troubled than whiney. The play still intrigues, but this revival is never sufficiently charged.
• At Old Red Lion theatre, London, until 3 February. Box office: 0844-412 4307.
