Last updated 05:32, Friday, 16 May 2008

It begins with bouncing bunnies and catapults and ends with someone who is no longer the person they thought they were.

The Wasp Factory, Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal

In between, The Wasp Factory takes in madness, infanticide, nudity, castration, and pyromania. Oh, and cuddly toys.

If that suggests a play walking a tightrope between the macabre and mirthful you’re getting the right idea about the theatrical version of Iain Banks’ infamous debut novel.

Centre stage is Frank Cauldhame, a confused 16-year-old who lives with his intimidating and eccentric father on a Scottish island. Looming in the background, both literally and psychologically, is older brother Eric, on the run from a mental institution, his approach conveyed via increasingly bizarre phone calls to Frank.

As with so much of Banks’ work, The Wasp Factory is a thicket of secrets and threats. What will happen when Frank gets home? Just what is the Wasp Factory? And what is in father’s locked study?

The set is supremely suited to this theme of secrecy, its wooden backdrop honeycombed by peepholes and compartments. But much is left to the audience’s imagination, as when Frank reveals the unspeakable sight that snapped the mind of Eric when he was a doctor.

The one-act play benefits hugely from the lack of a momentum-killing interval. But its greatest asset is the force-of-nature performance of Nicola Jo Cully as Frank, helping make Cumbernauld Theatre Company’s production an absolute triumph and one that transcends its source material to become a work of art in its own right.

MARK WALTON