Secret Theatre: Show 3

“Your last meal – what would it be?” The Lyric Hammersmith’s Secret Theatre season is now offering more tantalising clues on its website about the contents of its plays than before, though still no titles. But the bigger secret this time is where the play is actually being staged, and it is one of the few pleasures of the occasion that I don’t want to spoil the surprise for you, either.

There is something peculiarly disorientating about the unconventional way you are led to the site. And there is something particularly chilling about the ritual we are about to witness, apparent the moment we enter a room that resembles the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs: there in front of us is a gurney that is about to be used for an execution by lethal injection.

Caroline Bird’s Chamber Piece is a dark, stark work set in Britain in the near future where the death penalty has been reinstated. And we’re forced to witness its the grim unfolding spectacle in close-up quarters.

But then it is badly botched. The prisoner remains alive. And the wardens, a doctor, prison governor and witnesses are thrown together in a murky moral debate both about the ethics of the death penalty and the more immediate and pressing matter of whether and how to still execute the death warrant before it expires.

Unfortunately the play’s drama feels contrived and unconvincing, even if the subjects it debates are important. But after its opening salvo of two classic plays given radical but misfirings makeovers, it’s good to see Secret Theatre enter into its stride with a production that at last compels attention instead of just irritation. The acting company, too, are growing in concentration and strength as they continue to work together.