Lucky Box

A Play, a Pie and a Pint plays fall into two main categories – those written a while ago, often for another medium, and those on which the ink is barely dry by the time the pies go in the oven.

David Harrower's sinister two-hander Lucky Box falls into the latter category, and is all the more menacing for it - a darkly comic extended allusion to the global economic crisis makes for a memorable red herring in this twisted morality tale.

A teenage boy cutting through the woods one afternoon encounters a stranger sitting on a plastic storage box. A fairytale imp in a business suit, he speaks in riddles and keeps his cards close to his chest while posing moral dilemmas and musing about the nature of playground bullying in an era of political correctness.

As hit story slowly unfolds but the box is left unopened, the audience is invited to to imagine what its contents might be. The mystery would be solved must faster if the younger man, J (Scott Fletcher), simply opened it, and in moving the two actors around the thrust stage (so that the audience gets a chance to see their faces) Dominic Hill presents him a clear opportunity to do so.

However, the play takes the form of a meditation on retribution than a naturalistic drama, and the smirking J is ultimately a sounding board for A (Stuart Bowman). He is the manifestation of the older man's worst fears rather than a living, breathing individual with hopes and fears of his own. Nonetheless, Fletcher gives a compelling performance within these boundaries, oozing unearned confidence and holding his ground with an unflinching stare.

Bowman is superb as the unhinged and ambiguous A, and if the play loses momentum before the end it is because of the limitations of its premise rather than any fault with this captivating central performance.