The latest work by accomplished writer, Joanna Murray-Smith, is set (my programme tells me) in 1995, the year in which Patricia Highsmith died. Highsmith is visited in her Swiss lair by an envoy from her New York publisher who has been charged with coaxing the notoriously difficult writer to produce one final work involving the exploits of her most famous protagonist, the darkly talented, Mr.Ripley.

The one act play starts slowly enough with what, in the absence of any clues to the contrary, I took to be tiresome stuff of the kind only interesting to lovers of ‘Literature’, concerning the general mechanics of writing and the psychological, social and cultural significance of the author.  However, in my assumption that this was shaping up to be a case of literature looking up its own backside I was, happily, mistaken. The remaining eighty minutes are driven in a different gear after the envoy, a certain Edward Ridgeway (Calum Finlay) cleverly establishes a shared interest in weapons. The mechanics of suspense cheerfully begin to grind away as Ms. Murray-Smith leads us first one way, then another as her descant on the deformity of Highsmith’s personality and complicated relationship to her creation takes shape. Hindsight revealed the early exchanges to be but a charade and ploy in the altogether more subterranean machinations, which drive the play and keep us hooked. However this is a crime story, a thriller of sorts and reviewers needs must be careful not to spill any spoiling beans, so suffice to say that nothing is as it seems.

Phyllis Logan as Highsmith, gives a performance to rank alongside the best of the triumphs hosted by the Ustinov over the last few years.  Having slouched into a physically convincing ringer for literature’s curmudgeonly pin-up for the extreme right, Ms Logan gives a made-to-measure study of a subject who, in no particular order, is bigot, anti-Semite, racist, self centred and generally cynical about most things, particularly other writers.  It is a pixel accurate portrait of the kind of person we are fascinated to read about, but would give a wide berth to at parties (if she ever went to them) for fear of a splenetic ear bashing. One whose corrosive wit leads her to muse that, ‘People are at their best when they are at their worst’.  Such is Ripley, who features in unexpected ways in the play and is a kind of golem that ultimately destroys its creator.

Mr Finlay is a worthy chameleon to Ms Logan’s zookeeper. We blink and his colours have changed; he is the Machiavelli of the reptile house. The transformation from gauche votary into his final guise is deft and complete. Director, Lucy Bailey manages the swings of dominance and equilibrium with a certainty and clarity that leaves no doubt we are watching a battle of sorts, but the true character of which is not revealed until the end.

The play is a cage fight between morality and literature, the outcome of which is deliciously ambivalent. Switzerland, a place famed for its neutrality is thus an apt motif for a play about moral turpitude and its consequences for psychology and creativity. ★★★★☆     Graham Wyles   8^th August 2018