Killing Alan

Only two scenes into Killing Alan, alarm bells go off among the audience. The play, purportedly a “radical reworking" of the legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, appears to have reinvented its source material through the lazy means of simply transplanting it to the present. The six-strong cast are introduced as affluent socialites, hanging out in what appears to be a grand function room, following both the baptism of their friends' child and the funeral of the protagonist's parents. It's a potentially sterile set-up but the Rough Fiction production demonstrates great savvy in dodging the trap.

The play's narrative sees Alan, a modern Gawain, accept an offer from the brother whom he blames for their parents' demise, on the condition that the victim may stab him in retaliation a year later. The wound does not prove fatal and as Alan departs, fearing for his life, he is forced to put his emotionally insubstantial existence into perspective.

Aspects of the original tale, such as the disguise donned by the Green Knight, prove resistant to modernisation – yet this works to the play's thematic benefit, flitting as it does from gritty realism to pastoral fantasia. If the world Alan first inhabits seems dramatically lifeless and staid, this notion is reinforced emotionally as the play's actions unfold, with the character eventually eschewing his materialistic life.

Though the “bold physicality” promised by the play amounts to little more than the sight of two men kissing, the cast handle their multiple roles with aplomb, throwing themselves into an audacious work which is confident, poetic and deeply accessible.