The world premiere of the adaptation of SE Hinton's cult novel is something of a coup for Pilot Theatre Company. If it turns out to be less satisfactory than the company's last production, Lord of the Flies, it is not for want of theatrical daring - more to do with the fact that, for all its pseudo- Greek grandeur, Hinton's tale of brotherly love and hate in smalltown USA is big on teenage angst but small on more pressing world issues.
Adaptor and director Marcus Romer attempts some updating and there is a passing nod towards the connection between alienation, loneliness and the Columbine High School massacre. But there is little in the script that isn't conveyed more eloquently by his production, in which digital projection and live action are combined to quite brilliant and dislocating effect.
The overall impression is of something extraordinarily liquid, as if the entire performance is taking place in a giant goldfish bowl. A goldfish bowl which - as teenage tearaway Rusty James becomes increasingly obsessed with his brother, Motorcycle Boy - appears to fill with swirling patterns of blood. The sense of tension is added to by a continuous soundtrack that becomes a comment upon Rusty's increasingly agitated emotional internal world.
As in Francis Ford Coppola's movie version, the setting is almost timeless, maybe even futuristic, an impression added to by Ali Allen and Marise Rose's set, an urban concrete canyon complete with climbing wall. The actors use every inch of the space, both vertical and horizontal.
The increasing isolation of Rusty is cleverly done. This is a soul cut adrift: abandoned as a child by his mother, ignored by his drunken father, dumped by his girlfriend and rejected by his best friend. Romer's production places him in creasingly apart, bound only by an invisible umbilical cord to the brother who tolerates him but cannot embrace him.
Playing Rusty, Ari James is impressive on the boy's broken physicality, but vocally monotonous - particularly when conveying internal thought. These might work better as voiceovers. Most of the other characterisations are too skimpy to really make you care, although Ryan McClusky as Motorcycle Boy has a self-contained, detached glamour.
But for all its flaws, as with Lord of the Flies, there is a genuine sense of theatrical enquiry as it explores the relationship between theatre and digital technology, and triumphantly proves that they can be equal partners. And you can't complain about a show that gets 800 teenagers into the theatre on a wet Wednesday afternoon and generates the kind of rapt attention in which you could hear a pin drop.
Until October 7. Box office: 01904 623568. Then tours.
