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Alfie Allen as Allan

A sickening crime and a deeply disturbed teenage boy lie at the heart of Peter Shaffer's intense drama.

Alan Strang is referred to Martin Dysart, child psychiatrist at a secure hospital, after he blinds six horses with a metal spike at the stable where he worked weekends.

Dysart is begged to take the boy's case by his friend, presiding magistrate Hesther Salaman who believes the teenager is in desperate need of help.

So it becomes a huge and complex jigsaw for Dysart to put together the pieces of the boy's life until he finds the reason for his extreme violence against animals he loved.

The play builds to a crescendo, carefully orchestrated by Simon Callow as the psychiatrist, Alfie Allen as Alan, Linda Thorson as Hesther and Colin Hurley and Helen Anderson as the boy's parents - and the rest of a well choreographed cast.

Allen portrays the complexities of Shaffer's boy with great skill. On the face of it he is an ordinary, not too bright boy, from an ordinary, slightly dysfunctional home where his mother is deeply religious and his father an atheist dedicated to self-improvement.

But it is not just about the boy. The case has a seriously unsettling effect on Dysart. Callow exposes his self-doubt about what he does, whether he should meddle in young minds, and whether anyone has the right to define "normal".

He begins to feel that if he removes the cause of the boy's mental torment, in doing so he will have taken away the essence of who he is.

Ex-Avenger Thorson is one of the few warm and sympathetic characters and has good chemistry with Callow who leans on in her in the absence of any meaningful relationship with his wife.

It is starkly staged with metal skeleton horses' heads worn by actors, representing the horses remarkably convincingly.

Brilliant lighting, incidental music and sound effects do the rest.

Jo Bayne

3:41pm Wednesday 7th May 2008

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