lost monsters review

A CAST of the world's outsiders populate Laurence Wilson's new play.
Lost Monsters, which touches on Shakespeare's The Tempest as its base material, is part of the Everyman's commitment to new writing, and the 50th 'homegrown' production at the Everyman and Playhouse since 2004.
It's an impressive record, and Wilson's off-beat, mystical-tinged tale has the potential - albeit currently raw - to be one of its most enduring results.
The play is set in a run-down house trapped/cocooned in an other-worldly vortex in the middle of a motorway.
Designer Simon Daw's set is inventive, with the house encircled from above by a twisted carnage of metal crash barriers which drop, when required to create the illusion of trees.
The home is owned by mysterious loner Richard (the always watchable Joe McGann), a man of strange contradictions - an oddball seemingly intelligent and educated yet willing to believe the tales of armageddon pedalled in lurid red top headlines that flutter from the hard shoulder.
Into his world tumble a "trio of tinkering tykes" on the run from the law; hard nut - but, as we discover, soft-centred - Mickey (Nick Moss), heavily-pregnant dreamer artist Sian (Rebecca Ross), and autistic child-man Jonesy (Kevin Trainor) who sucks up knowledge and rattles off facts and figures at eye-watering speed before demanding to be tickled like a five-year-old..
In Jonesy, Wilson has created a genius of a character. It could be stereotypical, but it's not.
Yet he's such a force of nature, played with brilliance by Trainor, that at times it threatens to upset the balance of the play, which takes on two different complexions depending on whether he is on stage or not.
The action builds to a sustained and engrossing peak during the first half, but then seems to lose impetus before being wrapped up in a disappointingly pat ending.
Wilson is a talented writer of dialogue with an irresistible turn of phrase, which makes it surprising that the speeches he gives Ross's Sian feel awkward, while some of the references to the troubles of the modern world feel shoehorned in to a play which is often inspired but - at present - ultimately flawed.
7/10: Magical Mystery Flaw