In an earlier version, Helen, this play first appeared as ‘A Play, A Pie and A Pint’ production at Tobacco Factory Theatres in 2014. In its new and critically acclaimed form it returns to Bristol at the start of a UK tour.

Heather is a short and fiendishly clever two-hander structured in three distinct parts. With wit and dark humour, it raises important questions about authorship and the distinctions we may or may not make between a writer and her work. The play began to take shape in Thomas Eccleshare’s mind while he was reading a Harry Potter story.  He found himself wondering what the consequences would be if it was discovered that J. K. Rowling was not all that she seemed to be.  What if she was hiding some deep, dark secret? So, the first part of Heather begins as an email conversation between Heather Eames, a first-time writer of a children’s adventure story, and Harry, her publisher. He is convinced that her book has enormous potential, and he’s right.  Its central character is Greta, a young girl armed with a magic pen, and soon every child in the country is reading about her adventures.  In the normal course of events there would now be press interviews, book signings and all the hullaballoo that comes with being a literary sensation. But Heather Eames is a recluse, the only one of Harry’s writers that he has never met.  She has a young child who she is unwilling to leave, and she is seriously ill.  Reluctantly, Harry complies with her request that she be left alone, though he warns her that before long some journalist will seek her out…

To reveal much more of the plot would risk spoiling the fun, for Heather is full of surprising twists and turns.  Suffice it to say that in the second part Harry and Heather do meet, sparks fly, and some thorny issues are explored. Do we have too narrow a view of who has the ‘right’ to be a children’s author?  If a book is a commercial and critical success, can we turn a blind eye to its author’s failings? A writer’s pen is indeed ‘magic’; it can create worlds of mystery and wonder, and characters who seem somehow more real, more alive than those we meet in our everyday lives. But does that pen have the power of redemption?  Can the morality of a fiction outweigh the immorality of its author?

In the final section, we are taken into the imaginary world where pen-wielding Greta battles with the villainous Scorax.  This is an action-packed sequence that supplies an inventive tying up of loose ends, but the fantasy-adventure language is rather less interesting than what has gone before and the scene drags a little.

Ashley Gerlach convinces as a publisher whose moral compass is rocked by his encounter with his sensationally successful new author, and Charlotte Melia is fascinating as Heather, peeling away layer after layer to reveal… what? I’m not telling. Heather lasts less than an hour, but it will leave you thinking for much longer.   ★★★★☆   Mike Whitton   15^th September 2017