Modern drama is increasingly privatised: everyone writes about doomed relationships rather than social ills. Although Georgia Fitch's 80-minute two-hander, kicking off a Bush season of work by new playwrights, is fast-paced and furiously acted it makes me pine for the days when characters engaged with the world as well as each other.
Fitch's play starts with swiftly intercut monologues from its two characters. Leigh is a white, Catholic single mum with two kids and a job in local government; Angel is a cool black guy who has done time both at University and in jail and now deals drugs in Islington. Inevitably they meet, sexually click and what we see, particularly from Leigh's perspective, is the way erotic fixation slides into drug-dependence. In a sense she is destroyed by her addictive nature and hunger for "the total all-embracing experience", while the more guarded Angel shrewdly preserves his sense of self.
Like most ex-actors, Fitch writes good dialogue. And she understands not only the destructive zeal of love but also the inequality of passion: neglecting her children, her job and her PTA commitments, the increasingly desperate Leigh tells Angel: "I'd eat glass for you." Although Fitch captures the hermetic nature of an intense affair, she made me long to see her characters in a wider social context. I don't simply want to be told about Leigh's office traumas or Angel's hassles with his drug suppliers - I yearn to have the first-hand evidence. Otherwise drama simply becomes about experience refracted through the speaker's sensibility.
What keeps you constantly engaged is the acting. Julia Ford, in particular, is astonishing as Leigh. She starts out as a chirpy, engaging soul clearly resigned to her uncomplicated, sexless existence. By the end she has turned into a dope-filled mess whose eyes have lost their lustre and whose passion is totally spent. As a study in disintegration it could hardly be bettered. Mark Monero captures well the vanity and self-awareness of the streetwise Angel who, half-wrecked already, has much less to lose. Mike Bradwell's hectic direction drives the action along at a furious lick. I just hope next time round Fitch escapes from the cocoon of destructive personal relationships and ventures out into society.
· Until November 9. Box office: 020-7610 4224.
