The Quiz

Published Monday 16 June 2008 at 10:15 by Jeremy Brien

There is a rich vein of theatrical know-how behind this challenging and darkly intellectual one-man play, built very loosely around Dostoyevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor. For starters, it is the first new work for 13 years by former National Theatre resident dramatist Richard Crane, is directed and designed by regular collaborators David Giles and Kenneth Mellor, and played by Olivier Award-winning classical actor David Bradley.

Not that such a wealth of experience necessarily guarantees a quality product, but here it does spark a compelling hour-long work crammed full of cerebral themes. Bradley plays an actor who wants to exit permanently stage left. He has been touring his solo version of The Grand Inquisitor (with the working title of The Quiz) for 20 years now and devoutly wishes to join the likes of Kean, Irving and Tommy Cooper in dying on stage. First, though, he is determined to regale us with regular references to his love-hate relationship with his faithful female stage manager and his own family traumas. On the theatrical side, he has nothing but contempt for newfangled production gimmicks.

This is only the framework, however, for Crane to explore such universal subjects as salvation, the secular power of the church, fear of the unknown and belief in an after-life. It sounds like - and is - a heavy agenda. But there are plenty of lighter touches also, several of then courtesy of Mr T Cooper, and altogether the hour-long monologue is always articulate and never less than stimulating.