The heroine of this retelling of the story of Noah is his daughter Timna, but you won’t find her in the Bible. Nor in the Koran, where a version of the tale also appears. As Timna points out, in a religious patriarchy “a daughter’s name is not worthy of mention”. Timna is, in fact, the creation of Geraldine McCaughrean, the author of the award-winning novel on which this play, adapted and directed by Simon Reade, is based.

McCaughrean’s reinvention of the Noah’s Ark myth, seen through the eyes of a girl, not only gives a voice to the little-considered women on the voyage – the wives of Noah and of his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth – but questions the nature of faith and exposes the brutality and fundamentalism buried in the familiar narrative.

James Cotterill’s imposing design suggests the Ark’s rain-lashed deck, its huge wooden hull stuffed with a squawking, bleating, roaring, defecating menagerie, and a limitless horizon. And thanks to an ululating score, performed live by the composer Simon Allen and the Kurdish musician Nawroz Oramari, the production has a compelling Middle Eastern flavour, emphasising its topicality. Noah and his zealot son Shem talk chillingly of “demons”, “abomination”, of a world “purged by flood, washed in the blood of the sinful”; it’s the language of religious fanaticism. But Reade’s staging suffers from uncertainty of tone. Its origins as a novel for young people are evident in the actors’ overemphatic, didactic delivery. The shifts between first-person narrative and actual enactment are awkward. Overall, there is too much talk and not enough action.

The multitasking actors play animals as well as humans, and while this can be effective, it can also disappoint. McCaughrean may be pointing out the gritty reality behind iconic imagery, but the dove’s flight is rather anticlimactic when the bird in question is simply a performer dangling from a wire in a pair of tatty white trousers. But if the execution needs more pace and punch, the story remains pungent.

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