Review: Love, Loss and Chianti, a double bill by Christopher Reid at the Chichester Festival Minerva Studio

Rhyme and rhythm are potent keys to unlock the innermost emotions.

So this double bill, devised for the stage and performed by Robert Bathurst, undertakes its dark journey armed for the outset with the advantage of verse.

But add in the viola and cello in the first half and the most extraordinarily brilliant background animation in the second; and the simplistic combination of music, art and poetry ensures and evokes an overwhelming sense of the sublime.

The first part of the evening A Scattering, confronts the death of a wife through the eyes of her husband.

The second, The Song of Lunch, was intended as a contrasting piece of comic farce to lighten the mood.

But as the author himself admits, the story from its conception was destined for dark places - a doomed quest to find a love once lost.

Yet Bathurst, who dominates the stage, does so with the lightest and most assured of touches.

He never allows self-pity to engulf the first, maintaining a steady, almost stiff upper lip approach to profound grief.

In the second, he rolls self-deprecatingly with the humour, deftly avoiding all the pitfalls of overstating a single line.

Caroline Faber as the lost love brings a bitter-sweet warmth and seductive strength to the part.

At first glance, Love, Loss and Chianti may seem a difficult experience for some audiences. But in its magic lies masterpiece too.