WHEN you have the most famous name in the world, how hard it is to become anonymous again, just a number?

Central to Terence Rattigan’s Ross, the story of Lawrence of Arabia, is the struggle by the First World War’s most colourful character to escape his past and the demons that haunt him.

Whether those demons are a hatred for the horrors he has witnessed or a more personal struggle with sexuality, Rattigan leaves the audience to decide.

Certainly the parade of figures from Lawrence’s time leading the Arab Revolt against the Turks between 1916 and 1918 cannot agree on whether the man they encountered was hero or hoax. As such they reflect the enigma that was T.E.Lawrence, who after the war was won and hopes of an independent Arabia dashed, sought sanctuary from the public gaze by changing his name and joining the RAF as a low ranker.

Joseph Fiennes gives a tour de force performance in the role of Ross. Awkward, gauche, intellectually brilliant: his Lawrence is at once frightened and bold, introvert and boaster, camera shy and showman. Such is the performance that there is no doubting that here is a man who can find a deep love for others, and yet put a bullet into their brain if the fates decide.

In what is a surprisingly physical role Fiennes is superb, bounding with energy at the challenges to come, creeping with pain after torture. His exchanges with General Allenby, the commander of the British forces in the Middle East, played wonderfully by Paul freeman, are verbal knock about comic routine. And there is a lot of dark comedy too from his Nemesis, Turkish Military Governor Michael Feast who stops short of playing the pantomime villain in his Fez-wearing Ottoman boudoir, transforming into cold-blooded torturer.

Peter Polycarpou is superb as Lawrence’s Arab ally Sheik Auda Abu Tayi, a man just as likely to sell you to the enemy as slit their throats on your behalf.

Designer William Dudley’s simple yet clever set making full use of the large Festival Theatre space reflects the endless barren lands of the desert, three huge ancient Egyptian columns a pointer to the temporary nature of empires: Egyptian, Turkish and British.

Director Adrian Noble has resisted the temptation to tinker with Rattigan’s original script to reflect the current state of the Middle East, but it is all too obvious that the events unfolding throughout Ross play into today’s horrors in that war-torn part of the map. The descriptions of bloody atrocities performed 100-years-ago are all too familiar to reports from Syria and Iraq today.

Ross fails in his ambition to hide, but through his attempt the audience realises he didn’t want to disappear completely, just to belong.

Ross runs until June 25.