The Stage

One Minute

Published Monday 8 September 2008 at 13:20 by Gerald Berkowitz

Simon Stephens’ 2003 drama depicts the events that follow the disappearance and presumed abduction of an 11-year-old girl, but the child herself is something of a McGuffin. The play’s real interest lies partly in the depiction of methodical police procedure and partly in a dissection of the emotional and psychological toll on anyone even peripherally related to any ongoing investigation.

The girl’s mother, two police officers, a barmaid and a possible witness all find large and small cracks appearing in their lives, exemplified in a string of monologues in which each finds a simple walk through familiar city streets filled with inexplicable tension.

The playwright’s style is sometimes a little too elliptical for its own good, the characters a little too eccentric, and the whole narrative marked by a bit too much mystification for its own sake.

Director Robert Wolstenholme is not wholly successful in reining in the stray subplot lines and unanswered questions, but carries the play smoothly through its episodic structure and elicits strong performances from a cast led by Colin Tierney as a weary but ever professional veteran detective.