"Moth". Pilch

This is Alec Tiffou’s second play. The first, Daddy Longlegs, was showered with praise, and Moth proves that Tiffou is no one-hit wonder. What a privilege to witness such prodigious talent at such a formative stage! Moth casts a spell over the riveted, focussed audience in the Pilch. Caught in its power we are helpless, like pinned moths ourselves. We laugh, we cry; we are by turns shocked, touched, bemused and horrified.

Moth reveals its secrets with masterfully-controlled pace, so there will be no spoilers here. But it’s an incredibly intense four-hander, following a problem-ridden family through difficult times. Careering from outrageous confessions to superficially humdrum statements, it almost feels like the play is beating you up emotionally. I found myself bursting unexpectedly into tears at a moment of heart-piercing honesty one moment, then seconds later laughing out loud at an adroit piece of incongruity.

The theatre is barricaded with content warnings for this show, so I’m not giving anything away by telling you that one of the darker themes it addresses is incest. But Tiffou has the courage to look beyond knee-jerk revulsion and find something pure in the love between these characters. Likewise the complexity of the relationships between sister, mother, brother and brother is both brutally honest and devastatingly upsetting.

Of course a great play needs more than just a great script (although that is a pretty good start), and in this case it is on to a winner in every category. The poise of the acting, the menace, the pain, the matter-of-factness and the honesty, are thrilling and moving to behold. Rob Wolfreys, building on his stunning debut as Proteus in last term’s Two Gentlemen of Verona, is simply magnetic as the unstable teenager Luca. Esme Somerside is heartbreaking as his younger brother. Vita Hamilton, one of the busiest actresses in Oxford, has rushed over here from the Oxford Playhouse where she was last week playing one of the leads in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, to portray their sister, Jo, a woman whose bitterness and fury is so deeply buried that it comes out in the driest of chance remarks. (Her confession that she always thought the Rocky theme song Eye of the Tiger was about a vagina is only one of many firework moments in the show.) And Rose Martin, as the mother Ana, betrays terrifying depths of trauma with a quivering finger or an avoided glance. The moment when she allows her daughter, with quasi-sexual proximity, to stroke her aging stretchmarks is both deeply moving and disturbingly transgressive.

Backing up the actors is a crew from Matchbox Productions, who have become a byword for quality theatre in Oxford. Sonya Luchanskaya, now one of the most experienced producers around, seems to have conjured up the setting, sound and lighting with consummate ease. In fact, this set is deceptively complex, with multiple levels, rostra and flats, all of which add subtly and solidly to the show’s impact. The music is particularly powerful, effortlessly melding commercial tracks with original effects that underline the psychological struggles on the stage.

Normally I would try and leaven the praise with a constructively critical word or two. On this occasion, having scoured the illegible scribbles in my notepad, I can’t find any. Moth is compelling evidence of a burgeoning talent and a new voice. It treats death and grief with astonishing originality and freshness. It deserves to spread its fluttering wings beyond Oxford, and I’m sure it will.