BWW Reviews: BLOODSHOT, Greenwich Theatre, November 3 2011

In bleak late-Fifties London with its seedy clubs, slum housing and scruffy macs that were captured by the novels of Colin MacInnes, Derek Eveleigh, a photographer, pursues clues to solve the murder of the mysterious Cassandra in Douglas Post's gritty thriller.

Unlike MacInnes' young-man-on-the-make of Absolute Beginners, Post's snapper is an ex-cop who boozed too much to keep his job, but not enough to forget the crime scenes he witnessed through his lens. With television sounding the death knell for the photo-magazines the commissions for which had just about kept his head above water, Eveleigh cannot resist the money offered to photograph (surreptitiously) an inexplicably elegant woman, and - soon enough - he cannot resist the woman either, fascinated by the photographs of her he surrenders each Sunday morning in an empty telephone box for his unknown client to collect.

Set in this noirish milieu and with just one actor listed in the cast, the production runs the risk of presenting the audience with a gruelling couple of hours - but such is the storytelling talent of Simon Slater that this supposition would be as false as some of the leads his character follows. Not only does Slater command a big stage, creeping furtively through imaginary undergrowth the better to shoot his photos, falling drunk to pass out on the bathroom floor, smashing a window to gain entry to a nightclub office, but he also commands the audience's attention through his creation of four other distinctive and memorable characters. The voices change from Irish comic to Russian illusionist, but so too do the character's skills, as Slater plays the ukelele while performing a patter act, belts out some jazz saxophone and gives a convincing display of the magician's art. It is a bravura display of acting versatility.

Under Patrick Sandford's direction, lighting - so crucial to the play's cinematic aesthetic - is particularly well judged, as are the back-projections of images that are strong enough to make us believe in the photographer's skill and in his falling for his subject, but not so strong as to overpower the one actor on stage. There's a lesson there for other directors, sometimes overly keen to employ the bells and whistles a computer and a projector provide.

Though the device of using a single actor to steer the audience through a satisfyingly complex plot may not please everyone, those who remember Kenneth Williams' virtuoso performances on Jackanory will delight in seeing the ancient art of storytelling entrusted to an immensely skilled practitioner.

Bloodshot is at Greenwich Theatre until 6 November.