The Argus: Brighton Festival ThumbTricky thing, love – how to give it, who to give it to, what to do when you lose it?

The concluding part of Stillpoint’s Three Attempts At Love triptych offers no answers but a tentative sense of hope that whatever the mess, there may be good amongst it and, however broken we are, we may be mended yet. Most of all it urges us to keep going – as Samuel Beckett put it, to fail again and fail better.

The intelligence and intuition of creator and performer Rachel Blackman is used to dazzling effect, whether she’s writhing about with a teenager’s gawky aimlessness or conveying the magnetic draw and repulsion of a woman who wants to be loved but can’t bear the risk.

Her dialogue is wittily observed; a teenage character leaves a hilariously long answer phone message, a mother’s letter to her daughter is the perfect blend of stilted formality and desperate emotion. Physical theatre illustrates what cannot be verbalised. The audience seemed to collectively stop breathing in one gut-wrenching depiction of grief.

The collage approach Blackman favours is harnessed brilliantly here to form an abiding image of life in all its messy, multi-layered wonder.

Beautiful.