Review | Never Let Me Go at Chichester Festival Theatre​: 'Thought-provoking'

This time-honoured truth is played out on two levels in Never Let Me Go, a stage adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nobel Prize-winning novel.

Firstly, it is a concept which drives the story, where clones bred for organ donation use paintings to prove their humanity and be granted a reprieve from their premature deaths.

But by bringing the book to life on a stage, it also raises this huge question of what it means to be human for us in the audience.

We are introduced to Kathy H, a carer who looks after other clones during the process of harvesting their organs.

She has had an unusually long and successful career – and we meet her as she cares for her final patient before she too is called up for her operations.

Flitting between the present and the past as she regales him with her tales of growing up at Hailsham, a ‘boarding school’ where clones had an exceptionally nurturing upbringing, the dystopian world they live in slowly comes into focus.

We meet two of her childhood friends – the bossy Ruth and the troubled yet kind Tommy – with whom she enters into a love triangle and who she opts to care for as their short lives come to a close.

At two hours and 40 mins, including an interval, this is a marathon of a play – and the first act could do with being chopped down.

For example: Kathy’s final patient proves to be a red herring, as they die early and distract from the Tommy romance storyline.

So I would question whether they need to be in it at all, and whether the show could be streamlined in a more linear fashion to start with Kathy, Ruth and Tommy as children at Hailsham.

By the beginning of the second act, however, I was fully invested in the plot.

Would Kathy and Tommy admit their love for each other and find a way to have their happy ending against the odds?

A medical incident in the audience meant that the second act had to be temporarily postponed – so fair play to Nell Barlow and Angus Imrie for building the momentum back up for the devastating conclusion.

Their final exchange put a lump in my throat.

A thought-provoking play which will stay with me long after the final bows, with some condensing this could go from good to exceptional.

Until Saturday.