Michael Holland has certainly got the "previous" to write a play about the aftermath of an enormous armed robbery. He served 20 years for such a crime, and the dramatic set-up of Barnstorm, which pulsates at first with the adrenaline high of a "job" completed, smacks of lived experience.
>Unfortunately, once Holland has his three robbers safely ensconced among the haystacks in a remote barn, from where they await transport to their final destination, he doesn't know what to do with them.
The trio soon begin to suffer from cabin - or perhaps that should be hay - fever, and so do we, as the scenes drag on without developments, and each character hovers around the two-and-a-half dimension mark.
A decent script-editor would lop swathes off this, and would certainly discard all the past-revisiting dialogues conducted on what seems to be the designated Haystack of Doom.
No parole for good dramatic behaviour.
Barnstorm until 2 June (020 7261 9876, www.uniontheatre.org).
Barnstorm
Union Theatre
Union Street, Southwark, SE1 0LX
