Alison's House

Alison has been dead for 18 years, but her spirit endures. Inspired by Emily Dickinson, this 1930 play by Susan Glaspell - whose little-known, acidic feminist drama 'Chains of Dew' glittered here last year - raises the ghost of a brilliant American poet to wreak havoc among her surviving, fractured family.

It's New Year's Eve 1899 and a new century of seismic change beckons. With Alison's former Iowa home about to be sold and aficionados longing to pick through her reclusive existence, her elderly, fragile aunt, fiercely loyal brother John and his children wrangle over jealously cherished memories of an extraordinary woman. Who can claim ownership of a soul?And when an artist mines her troubled private life, should her most intensely personal creations be made public after her death?

As John, Christopher Ravenscroft is a self-appointed, emotionally suppressed protector of reputations, and Grainne Keenan is touching as his returning prodigal daughter, yet Jo Combes's suitably crepuscular but somewhat stiff production doesn't give the taut, rigorous writing the spun-steel toughness it deserves. Nonetheless, Glaspell's play is a haunted house alive with hushed intensity.