The Taxidermist's Daughter: Chichester, Bognor, Fishbourne are the backdrop to Kate Mosse's powerful tale of justice and revenge

The Taxidermist's Daughter

Chichester Festival Theatre

We've waited too long for a play of quality to be set in West Sussex.

The Taxidermist's Daughter, which opens the 60th season at Chichester Festival Theatre, instantly seeks to put that right.

World best selling novelist Kate Mosse who calls this city home, has lavished local references in her own stage adaptation of her gothic horror novel.

Chichester, Fishbourne, Apuldram, and Graylingwell take centre stage. Even North Street gets a verbal nod.

There is a titter from the audience that 'anything goes' in Bognor. Quite rightly the 'Regis' is not mentioned. That came in 1929 and this play lives 17 years earlier.

All that said, whether this production will bring coach loads of tourists to the area remains open to debate.

The rain - the most effective ever seen on the theatre stage - is relentless. The weather is ghastly. And the local people leave something to be desired as well.

Take Macbeth, add a sprinkling of Midsommer Murders and flavour with Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds and you begin to get the aroma of this potent recipe.

There's blood. There's bodies. There's lots of dead birds. And there is a distinct sense that life in Fishbourne was a lot less pleasant 100 years ago.

Given I was asked only the day before by a curious reader what the Taxi Driver's Daughter was all about, it's worth a reminder that the art of stuffing, and mounting the skins of animals with lifelike effect was considered a valuable skill a century ago.

It may be less of a career option today.

But Connie Gifford - oh so superbly played by Daisy Prosper - keeps her father's Museum of Avian Taxidermy in good order ever since a mysterious event in her past drove him to drink and wiped her memory.

As her recollections return, the darkness of that past event rips apart this male dominated and antiquated set of social rules.

You will learn many things during these dramatic couple of hours. How to stuff a crow and avoid staining your clothes when you pop its eyes among them.

This, however, is about justice - and retribution. Strong, potent, enduring.

It oozes a stench and atmosphere of sheer dread which even a glass of house wine in the interval cannot quite prove the antidote.

Ultimately it's about the role of women - but you would expect nothing less from the transformative pen of Ms Mosse.

Chichester has waited two years for curtain-up on this adaptation after the rude interruption by the pandemic.

Twenty four months later and the eagle may not have landed - but the magpie, crow and rook certainly have.

Covid may be waning, but beware ... corvid is now here.

Gary Shipton