“It has often been said of Harold Pinter that the silences are as important as the dialogue (as someone who has dried on a West End stage let me tell you silence is not all it is cracked up to be) so in Light the darkness plays an important role. This is a mimed show – but that doesn’t do justice to its complexity so I’m going to call it ‘Performance Art’ – in which the turning on and off of various sorts of torches and strip lights with timed perfection is key to the success of this highly original work. . . This darkly pessimistic view of the future becomes less fanciful as technology advances and this thrilling work is a timely reminder that we must all be on our guard.”

“The book is one of those more sniggered about than read. Not so much a manual of sex as the 70’s bearded recipe book, The Joy of Sex, but the reminiscences, laid out in letter form, of a young, parentless country girl who finds herself in sin city. Frances Hill (Fanny) is a girl who falls in love with sex as she falls in love for the first and only time. It is the story of a girl seduced by pleasure as much as by men . . . All in all this is a self-consciously bawdy romp performed by a top class cast in the perfect setting of the Bristol Old Vic.”

The house was full and that certain kind of lively buzz form a primarily youth audience was matched and controlled by an even flow of energy and commitment in the company’s performance. The pace was snappy and well choreographed. The scene changes were a dance of chairs, desks, and shadow puppet screens. I particularly enjoyed the musical aspects of the play – the choral singing arranged by Verity Standen. This lent a touch of spooky, a touch of the ancient chorus that enriched the idea of this being a piece about larger mystical forces playing with ordinary people.

It is a formidable task to create a play suitable for a family audience that nevertheless conveys something of the realities of life and death in the trenches of the First World War. Director Toby Hulse has responded to this challenge by devising a production inspired by Michael Foreman’s beautifully illustrated novella War Game, the winner of the 1993 Nestle Children’s Book Prize. This features the Christmas Day truce of 1914, when soldiers from both sides sang carols, exchanged gifts and played an impromptu game of football.