MEAT, Theatre503, review - Telegraph Seeing something terrifying or violent every day can numb a person to its shock factor. It's what must be the case for nurses, doctors, surgeons and also abattoir workers. The plot of Jimmy Osborne's new play MEAT follows a meat processing factory worker as he kills for a living. He uses a knife to slaughter an animal, drain its blood, strip it of its skin, chop it up and then he moves onto the next one. Vincent's daily routine is a monotonous cycle of death, blood and suffering. The question that hovers above the play is - can a human experience that much death and not be negatively affected by it? Vincent and his family scrape by well enough, their lives are lacking much joy, but they manage to exist. But when a young, troubled boy is violently killed in the small town where they live, it becomes clear Vincent has more to do with it than his wife and daughter initially realise. In its first half, Osborne's play jerks along at a halting rate. We're never sure if this is a farcical send up of small town happenings or a depressing insight into a town riding on a wave of public grief. I'm on the funeral committee! Vincent's wife Joy exclaims to him, when he decides they won't go to pay their respects. She barely knows the family or the son and yet there is a forced, manic glee in lines like, "As a mother, I feel her loss." This jars with the personal elements of MEAT however, which depict one man struggling with his perception of the value of life and of death. The performances don't help the mixed messages. Graham Turner as Vincent and Tracy Brabin as his wife are an awkward duo and it's not until the daughter, played by Charlotte Whitaker, arrives that the play begins to pick up pace a little. Her sassy teenage cheek gives a welcome break from the two unhappy parents, who talk at one another, but don't hear a thing. The set tries too hard; a white tiled kitchen, with plates, cups and tea towels which are all, predictably, red. The room has a clinical atmosphere, no doubt intended so it could also pass as an abattoir, but is not convincingly either. The dead boy, like a ghost, haunts the father, but having him burst out of kitchen cupboards for flashbacks feels more in tune with a children's magic show than a play about death. It's a problem with the production as a whole - none of the cast or production team have quite decided what exactly they are trying to achieve.