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Light Falls review – Simon Stephens' guilt-ridden love letter to the north

Royal Exchange, Manchester
Sarah Frankcom says her farewell as the Exchange’s artistic director with this moving testament to the power of family life

This has the air of an event. It is the sixth play Simon Stephens has written for this space and it is Sarah Frankcom’s final production as the Royal Exchange’s artistic director. Both artists are happily on their best form: Stephens’s ability to celebrate human resilience in the face of adversity is matched by the characteristic clarity of Frankcom’s production.

As so often, Stephens reveals his penchant for geographical restlessness. In Harper Regan (2008), he sent his eponymous heroine on an odyssey through the north of England. Light Falls begins with a monologue by middle-aged Christine (Rebecca Manley), who records the exact moment of her death in a Stockport supermarket in February 2017. We then see where the scattered members of her family were on the day in question. Her husband, Bernard, was looking for sex and company with two women in a Doncaster hotel. One daughter, Jess, was encountering a new lover in Blackpool while the other daughter, Ashe, was expelling her ex-partner from her home in Ulverston. Meanwhile Christine’s student son, Steven, was having a day out in Durham with his airline steward boyfriend.

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