Seven years since they were first seen at the Almeida, Neil LaBute's three one-act dramas - two monologues and an entwining duologue - still have the power to shock. Brought up as a Mormon (a religion for which this night is no advertisement), LaBute calls them "latterday plays", but there are no saints in evidence - the spirit of Greek tragedy hangs over these tales of ordinary people confessing extraordinary secrets.
In Iphigenia in Orem, a young Mormon tells of how he sacrificed his baby daughter to save himself from the redundancy that he believed to be imminent. In A Gaggle of Saints, which provides the triptych with its overall title, the bash that the two fresh-faced students attend turns out to be not just a party but also a murder in Central Park. The woman (played by Julia Rylance) in Medea Redux was impregnated and abandoned by her teacher at 13, and waits 14 years to take her revenge.
Labute is undoubtedly a clever writer, and he reels in his audience as he reveals the monsters who lurk beneath the skin of his apparently wholesome subjects. But although all three pieces grip painfully, they also feel contrived, and the glee with which they revel in their own nastiness is slightly creepy. These plays are entirely without compassion. Their failing is that, unlike their Greek counterparts, they make you feel no pity.
In a better production, LaBute's deficiencies as a dramatist may be less apparent. But this young English cast are never convincingly American, and Tamara Harvey's direction encourages performances that twitch and emote, so you are always aware that you are watching a piece of theatre. What these plays demand is an easy, matter-of-fact stillness, so that we suddenly realise we are not just appalled by what we're watching, but also implicated.
· Until February 3. Box office: 0870 060 6632
