HAUNTED CHILD Royal Court

Joe Penhall, author of the riveting and schizophrenic Blue/Orange, has written a play which asks why Darwinism and religious doctrine should be mutually exclusive. A husband (Ben Daniels) walks out on his wife and his ten-year-old son without saying anything. When he returns after a long absence, deeply disturbed, he tells her he has joined a cult and that he is into esoteric thinking and on a spiritual journey which goes further than Buddhism. He has given up his job, food, booze, music, sex, and lives on boiled eggs and bowls of soup. He wants his wife to renounce everything, including selling their home, and come and squat in a derelict building. When she objects, he accuses her of being paranoid and needing counselling. It is difficult to take him seriously and the audience laughs in all the wrong places.