Rob Drummond's probe into vaccines and misinformation will play to post pandemic audiences who know all about groping for contested truths to explain half-understood science.
His method is tricksy and playful - putting us into that same state of wondering who to believe - but the divisive subject is deadly serious and resonant.
It's a balance not always struck successfully in Amit Sharma's straightforward production. On Frankie Bradshaw's startling illuminated playground set, a playwright called Rob, played by an actor, (Gavi Singh Chera) is conducting interviews for a 'verbatim' play about vaccines at Kiln Theatre.
He asks them to trust him, he will be impartial, but requires them to sign a waiver so he can edit their words.
Mary (Vivienne Acheampong) believed Dr Andrew Wakefield's claims about the link between MMR and autism and did not vaccinate her son, with tragic consequences.
Twelve years later Robert (Brian Vernel) encouraged his mum to have the Covid vaccine, she died shortly after from heart complications.
A third character, father of immunology Edward Jenner, (Richard Cant) is clearly made up, but Rob constructs him from verbatim speeches, letters and writings.
Problematically - dramatically speaking - none of them interact and the question and answer format is somewhat deadening.
But all have their poignant moments, with Vernel's YouTube conspiracy theorist, who mistrusts politicians and big Pharma, clearly driven by loneliness and grief, and Acheampong's guilt stricken mother painfully realising that Wakefield's research was compromised and debunked.
Cant's jocular, flute-playing Jenner offers lighter relief, although his burning desire to save lives with his smallpox vaccine shines through.
Drummond gleefully exposes the playwright's artifice, as Rob reveals his own vested interest. A neat ending is upended as his characters talk back and challenge their creator, and his storytelling.
Questions of risk, bad luck, and unreliable narrators - in science and life - are raised without reaching a conclusion in an enlivening if not always revelatory evening.
Pins and Needles runs at Kiln Theatre until October 26.
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