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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Lyn Gardner

Catch

Claire knows it is not who you are but who you appear to be that matters. She has good reason, too. She has reinvented herself as a businesswoman running Chrysalis Identity Solutions, which helps clients "reactualise" themselves. If you want to change your credit rating or adjust your profile, Claire can help: she knows that in a CCTV, credit card world we leak information with every transaction we make.

There is an underworld beneath Claire's office - an underpass where the lights flicker, a place where Claire can be someone different, and where passers-by risk being mugged by a gang of teenagers who enjoy videoing their increasingly violent attacks on their mobile phones. Soon both worlds collide and the results are not pretty.

Written by April de Angelis, Stella Feehily, Tanika Gupta, Chloe Moss and Laura Wade, Catch has its atmospheric moments in Polly Teale's edgy production, but it lacks the driving vision you might expect from a single-author play. There are too many sketchily drawn characters jostling for attention and, like Claire's identity, the play often feels contrived, what with the conveniently located underpass and the knowing 15-year-old on work experience who gives the audience a lecture in the dangers of identity cards.

There are spot-on performances from Tanya Moodie as Claire, Kathryn Drysdale as the youngster and Lucy Briers as Claire's clients, but the lack of focus and loose ends are irritating.

· Until December 22. Box office: 020-7565 5000.

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