The Stage: Chicken (****)

Peculiar, elusive, but occasionally just a bit magical, Molly Davies' haunted dystopia pictures an England of fracturing counties, where community has fallen apart and nature is turning the tables on man. Set in and around a chicken slaughtering plant, there is a beauty in its evocation of an East Anglia where the old ways are returning in new and frightening forms.

There are hints of Thomas Eccleshare's Pastoral, as well as Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds in the story of flora and fauna gone feral, but here that is only thread in a narrative content to suggest rather than state, to leave things open and enjoy its own mysteries. It is less preachy, but no less political, than Davies' God Bless this Child at the Royal Court, and it sees her finding a distinctive and intriguing voice.

There is strong work from the entire cast in Steven Atkinson's straw-strewn production, but Rosie Sheehy is particularly impressive as the young girl who begins to tune into an ancient and dangerous frequency. Interspersed with English folk songs, there is something appealingly pagan about Chicken. It is a vision of the countryside that blasts rustic charm with the suggestion of ancient powers ascendant, a rural gothic, with its greatest strength lying in its weird intangibility.

Stewart Pringle