Rachel Halliburton

Why is it so hard to write a decent play about Bach? Maybe, in part, because there are no words that can express anything as eloquently as his music did – about life and death, pain and transcendence, wretchedness or rapture at the simplest aspects of existence. So much of what he represented was distilled into that music – and what we are left with biographically is the workaholism, the curmudgeonliness, the rows with figures of authority.

On Amelia Jane Hankin’s compact set, in which blocks are shifted around to evoke different settings — perhaps a visual reference to blockchain — we watch as the lure of DGX exposes the vulnerability in each character. Savagely humorous, the play doesn’t judge — instead it makes us ask what might force any of us to engage with this turbo-charged wheel of fortune.