Adapting a highly complex novel such as Paul Auster’s City of Glass for the stage is by no means a straightforward task; more difficult still is making the production accessible and intelligible for audience members unfamiliar with the original text.

For this year’s English Literature department play at Bedlam Theatre, Alexandra Randall has taken this challenge head on to produce an engaging rendering of the fractured portrait of the novel’s protagonist Daniel Quinn – a bereaved man who through coincidence gets an opportunity to inject some meaning back into his life by assuming the identity of an unknown private detective (curiously named Paul Auster).

Quinn (Solomon Mousley), having taken on the role of Detective Paul Auster becomes embroiled in the disjointed world of Peter Stillman (Kristoffer Bruce), a broken man with a horrific childhood history, who is convinced his estranged father is out to murder him. The possibilities of this new identity consume Quinn and it is here that the piece departs from the well known tropes of detective fiction and begins to ask broader questions about the nature of identity, language and imagination.

In order to give an audience the background information needed to grasp the complexities in some of the characters Randall has chosen to include a Greek chorus of players suitably attired in slick back evening wear to flesh out the narrative and provide a running commentary of the action on stage. These shadowy figures, coupled with the regimented yet ruptured set design of scaffolding and mirrors, serve to evoke perfectly Auster’s ghostly urban landscape.

The cast, for the most part, commit to their characters completely and bring to life Randall’s well adapted script. Regrettably, however, the dramatic tension which should be constant throughout the piece is often diminished by Mousley’s failure to engage with the other actors on stage. Certain dialogues which ought to have an audience on the edge of their seats turn into dull exchanges akin to those of an early read through of the script. This shortcoming aside, Randall’s City of Glass is a skilful reworking of Auster’s original; a production rife with potential.