The Bridge’s big summer show is Nightfall by prize-winning newcomer Barney Norris. Widowed Jenny wants her grown-up kids, Lou and Ryan, to help her run their farm in Hampshire following their dad’s death. But Lou’s boyfriend, Pete, has been offered work abroad. That’s the only major snag in this low-wattage rustic melodrama. The back story involves a secret abortion and a criminal assault for which the wrong person was imprisoned, but the plot centres on clingy Jenny’s desire to curb her nippers’ wanderlust. She’s a needy chatterbox who isn’t entirely without charm, and the same could be said of the other ho-hum characters who pass their time sprawling on a scruffy lawn, boozing and nattering. Large chunks of the dialogue might have been lifted from Radio 4’s farmer-drama The Archers.
The script has inconsistencies that could benefit from a visit to the menders.
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