Six Characters In Search Of An Author, Minerva Theatre, Chichester, until August 23

2:28pm Wednesday 9th July 2008

Director Rupert Goold is very much like the play's author, Luigi Pirandello, as both men offer the audience a challenge.

Having sent shock waves through Chichester, the West End and Broadway with last year's production of Macbeth, Goold turns his attention to the Italian's celebrated play, first seen in 1921.

This new version, written in collaboration with Ben Power, updates the story to reflect the media-obsessed present day.

The original setting has been changed from a theatre to a film studio where the making of a documentary drama is interrupted by the arrival of six strangers dressed in mourning black.

Led by The Father, they announce they are six characters from a play who, having been abandoned by its writer, are seeking an author who can finish their tale and thereby set them free from the horrific point of time in which they are frozen.

The film producer, who, by her own admission, has chosen to lead her life through the lives of others by capturing them in documentaries, eventually agrees to film their story and, as it unfolds, she is drawn into it.

The play is a vivid exploration of the art of theatre and the definition of reality. It questions what is real and what is illusion.

The updating provides a complex and baffling experience with plenty of twists and shocking theatrical moments, including a very realistic drowning.

It also allows a fuller expression of the sexual element, which was only suggested in the original.

Ian McDiarmid mesmerises as The Father, torn with guilt over his relationship with The Step-Daughter - an eerie performance by Denise Gough.

One leaves the theatre entertained, but also in need of enlightenment.

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