It’s hard to encapsulate his time-bendy head-scratcher, but think of the obsession in The Da Vinci Code with Mary Magdalene and a Doctor Who box-set watched on fast-forward and you’re halfway there; in terms of its theatrical pedigree, you can spot comparisons with JB Priestley and Thornton Wilder.
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McDowall’s control of form sharpens the theatrical friction of his intriguingly juxtaposed questions. It’s disappointing, therefore, that it ends with a kind of deflating answer.
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The Glow certainly radiates an unforgettable feeling of spooky beauty, invoking a place where you can almost hear the hooves of the riders of the apocalypse. It’s haunting.
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Alistair McDowall’s latest offering is properly bold stuff. The Glow is an epic that presents the supernatural as a violent, yet often funny thing – but as soon as you think you’ve accepted what it’s about, the play shifts unrecognisably.
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Alistair McDowall’s supernatural thriller, The Glow, centres on a woman who holds a mysterious glow. It’s both ambitious and complex, while also confusing in parts, probably requiring more than one viewing to make sense of the matters that it grapples with.
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There are things about ‘The Glow’ and its premise I’d be more critical of if there was anything else on the stage like it, and Featherstone’s immaculately stylish direction serves a script that would be left exposed by a more naturalistic production. But Alistair McDowell has undoubtedly come up with the goods again.
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If you surrender to it, it's utterly exhilarating and absorbing. But you might also write it off as utterly bonkers. It could all seem so fantastical that it becomes meaningless, but director Vicky Featherstone roots the play in a carefully sustained realism which the acting follows.
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McDowall set out to write a myth that tracks human history, then to transcend it. Naturally he falls short. But to watch him try is exhilarating. Go. Get your mind blown and your hackles raised.
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