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By some accounts, new Orange Tree boss Paul Miller could scarcely have alienated his theatre’s ‘traditional’ – ie, elderly – audience more with last year’s shocking ‘Pomona’ if he’d demanded all attendees hand in Freedom Passes for compulsory incineration.
The latest offering from much fancied writer Alice Birch won’t arouse any such controversy, but it’s certainly a clear declaration of Miller’s commitment to new blood, and break with the old regime’s staple diet of period revivals.
‘Little Light’ is a chicly Pinteresque dark comedy about a family locked into a mysterious annual rite. For the first hour, Birch and director David Mercatali stoke the tension to perfection as we try uneasily to guess what’s actually going on. Pregnant Clarissa (Yolanda Kettle) has returned for a strangely ritualistic annual lunch at the home of her bitter, sardonic sister Alison (Lorna Brown) and her partner Teddy (Paul Rattray), who appears to be a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
But this year, Clarissa has brought her partner: affable, patronising Simon (Paul Hickey). Actually, she had a freakout and jumped out of his car shortly before reaching the isolated house. But she can’t shake him, and the confused Simon blunders into the dinner, to Alison’s palpable fury.
Much of the undoubted thrill of the play is in the slippery nervous tension as we try to grasp what is actually going on at this cryptic gathering. There’s also the question of who to root for – Simon is the obvious proxy for the audience, but there’s something about his patronising dictation of how Clarissa should behave during her pregnancy that suggests he’s trapping her in as much of a ritual as her sister is. ‘Little Light’ is dark, strange, but funny and human enough to remain accessible.
I thought it was a shame, then, that near the end ‘Little Light’ simply rolls over and gives up all its secrets. It’s done poetically, but it feels like a betrayal of the play’s enigma, like if Pinter’s ‘Old Times’ had ended with a massive expositionary segment.
Still, Birch’s raw talent is palpable, and it’s fantastic that the once new-writing-shy Orange Tree has caught her on what’s undoubtedly her way up. There’s certainly no reason there should be a generational audience divide on this one, but I imagine anyone taking advantage of the £10 tickets for under-thirties – another Miller innovation – will feel pretty happy with their purchase.