Showing @ Tramway, Glasgow until Sat 1 Oct

Adapting his original 1995 book-come-memoir, Andrew O’Hagan transposes a dull beauty from text to action for the National Theatre of Scotland. John Tiffany’s production glows with the ethereal ghostliness of O’Hagan’s initial exploration, a soft eulogising of the fragile social history which questions an unknown society burdened with ubiquitous media attention and public curiosity.

Joe McFadden leads the investigation as a young journalist, characterising the naïve O’Hagan whose early life was plagued by the deaths of many. The original book, a portrait account of the author’s life working on the Fred and Rosemary West murders, widens its scope to include other notable ‘mispersons’ cases to comment on interconnected emotional turmoil, a shared family grievance for which there can be no compensation or recovery.

Neil Warmington’s chequerboard floor design, sliced in half by a portable concrete arch, does well to assume the role of those who are lost. Destitute and pale, its depth comes from the characters, whose nomadic movements provide a wandering desire, as family members in search of closure and as the missing persons who will never be found. As McFadden occasionally approaches a lone microphone at the front of the stage, a dramatic feature reminiscent of Lies’ Pauwel’s recent Knives in Hens production, his voice echoes throughout the space as if calling out to society and its members for help.

And so Tiffany masterfully utilises objects to demonstrate this emptiness, dropping sofas and cupboards downstage and up to signify their material importance in creating a home. As the families are interviewed, the tie to everyday life is cut off through minimalism and space. Though sometimes this is overplayed, and the dialogue becomes uncomfortably sentimental, or even weakly perilous, it is saved by the frequent breaks between interviews with addresses to the audience.

The ensemble builds a rich marketplace of ideas, suggesting that anguish and loneliness will follow us no matter how well we adjust to life without loved ones. The families are suspicious of enquiries but desire intervention, falling into a social limbo which can’t connect to the everyday world. So there’s an overriding need for connection, which O’Hagan suggests may soften the nature of our sorrow. Coupled with Graham Fagen’s companion exhibition, a video tour split between weaving city streets in London and filming a suburban household, The Missing darkly realises our fears while tinting them with a burning desire for community.