Theatre review: Touched, Glasgow

THIS WEEKEND, the theatre students of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama – soon to be known as the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland – are putting themselves through a fierce set of paces at the Tron, including, upstairs in the Changing House, a sharp, good-looking production of this intense 75-minute drama, first seen in 2009, by the Leeds-based writer Chris Thorpe.

Written for a cast of eight, the play opens as Dan, who has been away for a year or two joining anticapitalist demonstrations across Europe, returns to his hometown, and to the friends he left behind. With him comes the friendly ghost of Anna, who was killed by a police bullet somewhere in Europe before their relationship could really begin. Apart from Dan's generous female friend Mel, everyone else is in a bit of a rage, from Dan's younger brother Joe to his old girlfriend Tash, who has recently become the sole survivor of an air crash; and it transpires that Dan left the town in haste, after his sister's death in a car accident which was partly his fault.

Thorpe's theme, in this eloquently nihilistic play, is mortality, trauma, and the futililty of everything, given the inevitability of death. If there's one thing that makes these characters angrier than the status quo, it's the arrogance of those who think anything can be done about it. As a piece of theatre, Touched is fashionably grim, and largely pointless. But as a showcase for the skills of director Jane Hensey, and of leading actors Daniel Sawka, Daniel Cameron and Lynsey-Anne Moffat, it's never less than impressive, even if we're often left wondering why the characters bother to stay alive, in a world where the greatest happiness on offer is the chance to "drink some wine, and talk some crap".