DENIAL

Bristol Old Vic

Maverick playwright Arnold Wesker once said that "the anecdote is slight, merely good for conversation. Trying to transform it into literature is like trying to make a wooden doll stand in the square instead of a statue. Yes, something can develop from a dinner-table anecdote, but it's important to distinguish between what is heard and what it can become." It is therefore surprising that Wesker's latest play, Denial, falls into exactly the trap against which he warns. It is an illustrated lecture on the perils of False Memory Syndrome, a case history illuminated with cardboard cut-outs instead of rounded characters, which offers no more insight into either the process or the anguish than a two thousand word feature in the Daily Mail. This might be forgivable if the play at least had the urgency of topicality, but FMS is a subject so stale that even Reader's Digest subscribers consider it old hat.

The story is simple, and one which will be familiar to anyone who has ever read anything about recovered memories and False Memory Syndrome (FMS). Jenny (Nicola Barber) seeks help with her depression and life-destructive tendencies from therapist Valerie (Susan Tracy). Through hypnotherapy, she 'recovers' memories of having been abused by her father Matthew (Jeremy Child), and her resultant accusations wreak havoc with the emotions of her relatives. An objective viewpoint is provided by Sandy (Ellie Haddington), a journalist making a documentary about FMS. And to introduce medical refutation of 'recovered memory', Wesker occasionally wheels on a Jewish doctor with a strong German (or is it perhaps Viennese?) accent who goes by the 'subtly' symbolic name of Ziggy (Bill Wallis); a freud - sorry, friend - of the family.

The device of the television documentary allows Wesker to show Valerie as a controlling and controlled individual with a very clear personal agenda. However, if his aim is to suggest that FMS is the construct of ambitious under-qualified therapists with some very personal axes to grind, it is undermined by a very strange set of reactions. Both Jenny and her sister respond with such ferocity and fury to the suggestion that their father might have abused them that even the more cynical viewer is inclined to conclude that the lady doth protest too much and reach for the eponymous diagnosis of denial. Either Wesker is intentionally subverting the very argument which he appears to be propounding, or something has gone wrong in the emotional presentation of the play.

The latter explanation may apply. Whilst it is undeniable that anyone involved in a 'recovered memory' of incest is going to be angry and upset, it seems unnatural for them to be running at full emotional throttle all the time. Yet in Denial, the entire production is delivered at a constant pitch of intense rage, without variation, moderation or motivation. The actors seem to have received far too little advice on the emotional tone of their performance. Those performers who give the strongest performances - Ellie Haddington's cynical wisecracking journalist, Nicola Barber's astounding outpourings of hysterical anger, Jeremy Child's shell-shocked father - appear to be achieving this through natural flair rather than directorial guidance.

Denial fails to achieve any objective which it might have. As a 'reportage exposé' of False Memory Syndrome, it comes about five years too late. As a theatrical experience, it fails to flesh out its characters sufficiently to allow an audience any sense of either empathy or sympathy. And as a work of literature, it fails to reach beyond the anecdotal to the rich drama which it could potentially contain. Wesker has - in his own words - stuck to what is heard instead of what it could become. In breach of his own injunction, he has tried to make a wooden doll stand in the square.

TOBY O'CONNOR MORSE

Until 10 June. Box office 0117 987 7877