Review - Six Characters In Search Of An Author - Festival Theatre, Malvern, until Saturday, November 7.

UNUSUAL in every way. It's an unusual title and most certainly an unusual play.

Here is a very modern spin on one of the acclaimed works of 20th-century modernism. A play which was perhaps way ahead of its time and which is still captable - some 90 years on - of causing considerbale conjecture, if not agony and argument.

Luigi Pirandello's original offering first saw light of day in 1921 and came close to sparking riots among its first-nighters. The Italian dramatist clearly set about experimenting with the concepts of truth and illusion, what is real and what is make-believe.

Now, in this considerably updated revival, Rupert Goold and Ben Power have taken on the action apace with their adaptation and moved it clearly to modern times where a television documenatry team's project on assisted suicide is 'hijacked' by a group of characters who suddendly appear at their studios seeking an author...

It does sound most absurd. But somehow this extraordinary madhouse does work.

It is brilliantly bizarre, weirdly wonderful, either description fits, as the characters' dysfunctional family - a mother, father, step-daughter and son, and their boy and girl - reveal their tragic lives of lost love, absolute despair and deadly betrayal. However, even their sad tales prove to have as much contradiction and contention as Pirandello's original intentions, as gradually their roles and that of the production team reverse and the family are seen as real people.

Documentary-drama or drama-documentary - the point is made early on by one of the production's camera crew. Sometimes these reconstructions can present the 'drama element' as 'truthful accuracy'. So what can we really believe? It's the question posed here in a most unconvential and ingenious way and which is guaranteed to provoke considerable discussion on the way home.

Jack Shepherd, away from solving crime in Cornwall in his Wycliffe role, is the pivotal father figure. A superbly strong performance splendidly backed by Catherine McCormack (the documentary producer), Gina Bramhill ((the abused tenage step-daughter), and the rest of the cast.

Pirandello once wrote in a letter that 'his work has alway been a challenge to the opinions of the public'. This radical piece of work is clearly a challenge to the theatre and audiences, but it's certainly worth taking up the gauntlet!

AJW