Terre Haute

Norwich Playhouse

Norwich Playhouse

The first play in a decade by revered playwright Edmund White looks at the Oklahoma bomber through the eyes of Gore Vidal.

White imagines a series of meetings between the boy on death row, convicted of killing 168, and one of America's most revered writers and thinkers.

The action plays out in Terre Haute, Indiana, but it's clear the name of the play is more than just a key to its setting. This is a script in which the moral high ground see-saws from one character to the other, and in the end, all are equal in the face of death.

It was not exactly a cheery night out, but Peter Eyre, as the cultured bisexual writer and politician, turned in a compellingly understated performance and Arthur Darville, fresh out of drama school, was all the bland-faced lost boy you could wish for.

The set: three chairs and a prison cage with pinpoint lights was spare and bleak.

But this was not really much of a visual work - more of a radio play on legs. Still, the argument sucked you in to an intense relationship.