The Cage

Pleasance Dome
13-30 August, 15.50

A not unpromising psychological thriller – a jilted husband wants to kill his best man, who ran off with his wife – looks suspiciously like a first act draft; or a fascinating monologue that has subsided into mere confrontation.

And after 55 minutes, it just stops, with a wounded party groaning in agony, and a pregnancy left in limbo. The author, Dugald Bruce-Lockhart, a stalwart of Ed Hall’s Propeller company, is thoroughly engaging, though, as a nasty Nigel Havers-type avenger.

He even yanks a nerdy-looking critic (no-one I know, dear, as Coral Browne once said of a giant phallus) out of the audience; this plant, proves, disappointingly, not to be the real object of his hatred.

A mistake, too, I feel, to have loaded guns pointed at the customers. Nobody needs that hassle any more. I hope Bruce-Lockhart re-groups and writes a proper two-act version. There’s nothing like a good new thriller, and this one is nothing like a good new thriller …yet.