HighTide festival review – an express train of sex, death and social outcasts

Now in its ninth year and transferred from Halesworth to Aldeburgh, this admirable festival showcases new writing. Admittedly one of this year’s four plays, Anders Lustgarten’s Lampedusa, has already been seen in London. The other three are brand new and deal, in different ways, with loss of identity, sexual guilt and social upheaval.

The most compelling is Harrogate by Al Smith, who has written copiously for Holby City and EastEnders but who here ventures into Pinteresque territory. In the opening sequence we see a father quizzing his teenage daughter, with suspiciously prurient concern, about her clothes, her make-up and even her love life. Only gradually do we realise that we are watching a form of role-play and a study of a man seeking to expunge his secret guilts through therapeutic enactment. To say more would be to spoil the fun. But I was constantly reminded of Pinter’s The Lover, in which a married couple act out their erotic fantasies, and of The Collection with its teasing uncertainty as to what may or may not have happened in a Leeds hotel room. Nick Sidi as a man on the verge of disintegration and Sarah Ridgeway as three different (or are they?) women perform impeccably in Richard Twyman’s production.

Luke Norris’s So Here We Are, which moves to the Royal Exchange, Manchester after Aldeburgh, also shows a man wrestling with sexual demons. In the first half we see a group of friends, sitting on a Southend sea wall, lamenting a friend’s death: later we flashback to learn just why the mourned Frankie killed himself. As in his earlier Goodbye to All That, Norris writes sharp, fast dialogue that shows a real ear for everyday speech.

Steven Atkinson’s production also hurtles along like an express train and is vividly acted by Daniel Kendrick as the tormented Frankie, Jade Anouka as his disillusioned lover and Ciarán Owens as the friend who has deserted both him and the delights of Southend for Hong Kong. But, where Smith’s Harrogate had the joy of the unresolved, Norris’s play offers too easy an explanation for its hero’s death.

There is even more angst in EV Crowe’s Brenda which shows its eponymous heroine breaking down as she and her partner prepare to address a community action group about their inadequate home and job prospects. But although Brenda is clearly a desperate figure who repeatedly claims “I’m not a person,” Crowe never makes clear to what extent her plight is social or self-inflicted. Caitlin McLeod’s production, which moves to The Yard in London, plays intriguing games with reality, Alison O’Donnell and Jack Tarlton perform excellently but the play never quite justifies its conclusion that we are all living on the cusp of cataclysm.

• In Aldeburgh, Suffolk, until 20 September. Box office: 01603 598606.