Light Boxes

In 2011, Shane Jones, author of the novel Light Boxes, told stage director Finn den Hertog that, "it's yours now." Four years on and Hertog tells us the same thing in the programme for his stage adaptation. He's right to warn us of subjectivity: this maze of creative staging is an odd, perplexing and mezmerising feast for the senses. It's best when taken straightforwardly, as a picture of fantasy.

Silver balloons make up the sky, wood chip is underfoot and flora and fauna is everywhere. The staging is an immersive beauty that reminds of videogame staple Zelda. The plot is as fantastical and abstract: February—the month—is ruining lives, stealing the children of bee keepers and sculptors, and it even steals our own Bianca (Vicki Mandelson). It layers the land in frost and devours the innards of horses. War on February is declared by Thaddeus and Selah (played convincingly by Keith Macpherson and Melody Grove). Crescendos of live music hang in the air, and serve to buffer the play's best part: the chronic, survivalist discourse of our pair as they wade through the oddity. A battle takes hold at the play's close and February is violently beaten, our civilians (narrators?) left to fight another day. Bianca is alive again. Light Boxes is an audio visual masterstroke – yet a fidgety watcher might leave perplexed. Don't be: good versus evil rarely looks this pretty.