Rose theatre, Kingston
Nell Barlow is heartbreaking as the doomed heroine of the alt-reality boarding-school tale, expertly adapted by Suzanne Heathcote

Any dramatic adaptation of a well-known story has an inherent problem with tension. How can a script hold those who already know the outcome?

On the first night of this stage version of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go – the Nobel prize-winning author watching warmly from the stalls – you could sense the apprehensive fascination of first-timers. Why are teenager Kathy H and friends at a rural boarding school where the students are encouraged to be as healthy as possible while paradoxically knowing that most graduates die in hospital in their 20s? What are the meanings – in this alt-reality version of late 20th-century Britain – of the euphemisms “carer”, “possible” and “completion”?