Fresh from its run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, this production has the feel of a well-oiled machine. The success of the piece, adapted for the stage by Tom Powell, lies in its simplicity: the stage is bare save for a few boxes, and the audience must visualise the beauty of the night-sky and the dinginess of the Karpinsky flat through the words of the script. A play like this is very well-suited to the intimacy of the Corpus Playroom, where the confined space enhances the effect of the dialogue, particularly in the claustrophobic scenes involving Stanley, Anne and Henry.

All of the cast members perform their roles to a high standard, but Jack Gamble shines as Stanley Karpinsky, eclipsing everyone else when he is on stage.  As the hunched and stammering figure overcome with desperation and grief, Gamble’s portrayal is natural and effortless and his dynamism is keenly missed in the scenes where he doesn’t appear. Georgia Wagstaff, playing the naive but well-intentioned young socialite, Anne Lawson Heiler, is engaging and charming.  She appears most at ease in the first half of the play, but is slightly one-note in the latter half as she strives to convey her character’s confusion when tragedy strikes.  Sam Curry, as Henry Davidson Merill, is well-suited to the role of debonair heir-apparent, although his delivery of his lines following Henry’s epiphany at times lacks punch and emotional depth. Curry is a little too controlled to deliver the earnest lines of youthful idealism written by Powell.

The production may not be perfect, but the strength of the ensemble cast make up for any minor deficiencies evident in individual performances, and the piece grips the audience’s attention from beginning to end. One jarring note in the aesthetic of the piece is Laura Waldren’s portrayal of Mrs Karpinsky. Apart from looking far too pretty and fresh-faced to play a sick and dying Polish woman, (even allowing for audience credulity) her bright pink fingernails were an unwelcome distraction and a careless faux pas.

Powell’s script is innovative, fleshing out scenes and adding his own flourishes without compromising the original text. There are some rather surprising deviations from the original storyline – most notably the disintegration of Henry and Anne’s relationship and Karpinsky’s reaction to his mother’s death – and it could be argued that these variations dilute the bleakness of Vonnegut’s piece. But, at it’s heart, Powell’s script remains true to the spirit of Vonnegut in exposing the fallacy of the idea that “there was nothing wrong in the world that could not be repaired easily.”