When the Rain Stops Falling is a sprawling and sophisticated play, which tracks the echoing impact of one father’s secret, across four generations and two continents. Andrew Bovel weaves together his scattered plot-lines with finesse, softening the line between past and present, until the two begin to merge. The show is given real shape by Michael Attenborough’s excellent direction, which manages to be light and restrained, whilst still imposing a surging, definite rhythm onto this delicate play.

Yet, despite all this technical prowess, there is something missing here. The writing is too flashy for its own good and as the metaphors pile up and the recurring motifs keep on recurring, Bovel’s style starts to overtake his content. The dialogue becomes forced, the characters a touch too neat and the plot-twists a tad convenient.

Bovel is best known for his film Lantana, and it is easy to see how his slick writing and spiralling plots would work well on film. But it doesn’t quite fit on-stage – there is too much technique for the stage to handle and not enough emotion to fill it. More time is spent linking the scenes than really opening them out. The characters feel muted as a result and the relationships fall flat.

There isn’t much for the actors to hold onto and their roles slip from their grasp. Lisa Dillon is the only one to take hold of her part, infusing it with the type of passion and intensity that is missing elsewhere. The other characters seem trapped in a stasis of misery. It is all quite sad but it also hard to engage with. Simmering emotion is all very well but it has to be released at some point.

It is ideas and not emotion that Bovel is interested in here, which makes for in impressive, stimulating but (sadly) unmoving show. 

Till 4 July 2009