Acting makes the night

A play about a young woman's descent into drug addiction is going to be either an evening out combining a large splash of worthiness with a small dollop of enjoyment, or an entirely miserable affair. At least that's the expectation.

But The Knot Of The Heart, the Lace Market Theatre's latest production, manages to be neither of these things.

From start to finish it's wholly absorbing and compelling.

And, what's more, entertaining. Playwright David Eldridge deserves a lot of the credit for this, but the actors are chiefly responsible.

Rosina Reading, demonstrating again what a versatile actor she is, is quite brilliant as protagonist Lucy, a recently sacked children's

television presenter.

In the first scene she's inhaling opium, but otherwise her behaviour and physical control seem normal.

Thereafter Reading shows us Lucy's steady physical deterioration, her deathly pallor, her increasing restlessness and awkward angular movements. It's horribly realistic.

Her over-bearing and possessive mother, Barbara, who it transpires also has an addiction problem - in her case, to red wine - is Hazel Salisbury in another realistic performance. And Arwen Makin is an excellent elder sister Angela.

She's like the elder brother in the Prodigal Son story when she remonstrates about her mother's perceived favouritism towards Lucy.

This is a play as much about family relationships as it is about drug dependency.

There are also revelations from the past which help to explain Lucy's predicament.

And it takes a look at PR and the media, and the contemporary obsession with fame.

The only male actor in an otherwise all-female cast, Lace Market Theatre newcomer Tom Rostron plays six parts.

He's equally convincing in all of them: rich-kid junkie, psychiatrist, nurse, kindly doctor, vicious drug dealer...

The play ends on a more or less positive note, but you have to wonder how long before things take a dive for the worse.