The Capone Trilogy: Lucifer

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Pity the cast of director Jethro Compton and writer Jamie Wilkes' follow up to their acclaimed Bunker Trilogy. While audiences may carry themselves like martys as they shuffle into an unbearably stuffy mock-up of a down-at-heel room in Chicago's Lexington Hotel, they are merely tourists. For the duration of the Fringe, this poorly-ventilated, low-ceilinged attic is the actors' world, and for them to perform a trio of gruelling shows in it each each day without the aid of oxygen masks, is a sign of rare dedication.

It's the Lucifer installment of the saga for which the sweltering temperature proves most appropriate. Each play is an exercise in escalating tension, but this portrait of a 1930s gangster attempting to consolodate his power within the underworld, while concealing the precarious nature of his existence from a glamourous young wife, is a particularly deft exercise in chest-tightening claustrophobia.

He may be an anonymous crime fiction cipher, but as we watch sweat trickle out from beneath the fedora of David Calvetto's cornered protagonist, the events unfolding metres from our equally moist faces seem brutally real. The blasé acknowledgement of a killing with which Lucifer opens gives way to a toxic, existential dread. Nick, a close associate of the recently incarcerated Al Capone, has no way of knowing whether he resides at the top of his industry or is next in line for a gangland slaying. It's his proud insistence on asserting control over his environment that drives events to an extremely satisfying, albeit emotionally and physically violent conclusion.