Loft Theatre, Leamington

Until February 9

The Loft put on the best piece of theatre you'll see in Leamington this year. Well done them.

Displaying more imagination, innovation, creativity and genuine drama in two minutes than most plays manage across a whole season, The Good Thief shows the peaks to which non-professional theatre should aspire. The quality of performance and production are of the highest order, and one is left thinking: why can't everything be this good?

To call it a one-man show is to do a disservice to the one man in it. Roy Donoghue plays countless characters, bewilderingly and believably, without so much as a costume change. His face, body and voice contort remarkably to convey characters ranging from Belfast gangsters to a three-year-old girl.

The story is told entirely from the perspective of Donoghue's prime character, as endearing a vicious thug as you could imagine, caught up in Northern Ireland's brutish gangland.

The only props are a table and two wooden blocks, manipulated to form a car, a bed, a bath, a bar. The monologue is punctuated by passages of thudding electronic music and brash lighting. Heck, even the curtain call is performed with skill and intelligence. The result is thrilling; the only possible criticism is that the spectacle at times threatens to draw attention from the story.

The Loft's management is going through a transitional period in the hope of restoring some of the vitality with which the company was once associated. If they choose this as the model to build upon, we can face the future of local theatre with new hope.

Peter Ormerod 9/10