SIMON STEPHENS’S new play marks the last production from the Royal Exchange’s artistic director Sarah Frankcom before she takes over the reins at LAMDA drama school.

One of the country’s finest directors, she has reshaped the Exchange into a theatre with international renown and over the past decade her innovative work, especially wonderful collaborations with Maxine Peake, have thrilled audiences.

That’s not necessarily the case with Light Falls, inspired by a road trip she took in 2016 with Stephens across the north of England, visiting Warrington, Blackpool, Ulverston, Doncaster and Durham.

The five towns are linked to Stephens’s family yet are places he had never visited and the trip was to discover how they made him the person he is today.

Light Falls opens with a long monologue from Christine, a reformed alcoholic from Stockport, who’s on the edge and about to suffer a catastrophic event. What follows is an interweaving picture of what her husband and children were doing at the precise moment disaster struck.

Husband Bernard is on the brink of a threesome in Doncaster while Jess, her eldest, may be about to embark on another dodgy relationship. Her son, Steven, is studying law at Durham University and is in meltdown while their sister, Ashe, is confronting her useless ex following a failed suicide attempt.

As Christine, the charismatic Rebecca Manley grabs the opening scene as we watch her growing bewilderment as what is about to happen to her seeps in. The whole cast are excellent as the devastation of Christine’s tragedy impacts on their lives.

Stephens’s play is about the north and adversity as viewed through one family but the focus is too narrow — the region is more complex, nuanced and diverse than it is portrayed here.

Everything in the north is not dominated by poverty, fecklessness and rain. There is little explanation as to Christine’s alcoholism which appears to be the catalyst for the family’s dysfunction and the danger is this becomes just another play blaming a mother for the ills of her family.

Frustratingly, while there are some nice one-liners and affectionate moments, overall Light Falls lacks the emotional pull that the family’s tale should generate.

Runs until November 16, box office: royalexchange.co.uk