REBUS
New Theatre, Cardiff
Tue 5-Sat 9 Feb
World-weary, ex- drinker, ex-SAS-slash-detective John Rebus is retired. However, like many shady coppers, it’s not long before the past comes back to bite him. Confronted by a murder victim’s daughter outside his Edinburgh home, Ian Rankin’s famous detective returns to what he does best: catching killers.
Despite being intended as ‘a one-novel wonder’, 20-plus novels later, Rebus is still going strong, this time appearing on stage in Cardiff’s New Theatre. Rebus: Long Shadows will likely do little to shake off the image it’s built of a dirty booze-and-drugs-soaked Edinburgh, with the stage production of this burnt-out detective picking up where he we usually leave him in the novels in his usual trademark style. Sounds promising. Turning to his ex-colleagues for help, it seems they won’t so much as touch him with a barge pole for fear of his of past actions tainting one of their own investigations. With little chance of catching his suspect then, Rebus turns to an unlikely accomplice – a man of whom he’d spent his career trying to arrest.
For fans of the novels and television series alike, this latest stage adaption – by Rankin and playwright Rona Munro, and starring Ron Donachie, Cathy Tyson and John Stahl – seems unlikely to disappoint. Who knows, perhaps it’ll even convert them into Raith Rovers supporters.
Tickets: £11-£32. Info: (029) 2087 8889 / www.newtheatrecardiff.co.uk
words Oliver R. Moore Howell