and the little one said…

Eight years after he was abducted aged ten, Ben is home. At least, that’s what others call it, but for Ben, home is still a windowless attic a few miles down the road where everything from reading time to the daily menu is regulated by a sociopath. With his father and twin sister shouting questions, we see how Ben might miss his quiet, orderly prison – especially since noone will answer his own questions about his dead mother.

Playwright Laura Stevens wrestles bravely with this gruesome predicament, familiar from news stories yet beyond comprehension: the abduction and raising of a child in a parody of parental care. She is adept at poignant, evocative moments – Ben insists on toast cut into a house shape, but leaves the windows for his twin; the siblings, each differently bewildered, regress to playing Connect Four.

But the play falters with the appearance of Ella, a stranger who wins Ben’s trust, but who has problems, not to mention a wearily predictable agenda, of her own.Stevens badly wants to examine prurience, and knows she is as culpable, in a way, as the press pack slavering outside Ben’s house. However, her attempts to acknowledge this turn tiresomely coy, and Ella is never fully believable, despite Maeve Ryan’s appealingly hurt eyes and tremulous delivery.

Still, it’s Ben’s story, and Chris O’Shea is superb as the damaged, oversized child, trying to become

a whole man in a broken world.