Plays are getting shorter. But, while the new compressionism has its merits, dramatists are losing the art of developing a character and situation and, watching Simon Stephens's new 70-minute piece, I felt the audience was being asked to supply the missing information.
Geographically and temporally Stephens covers a lot of ground. We first see the hero, Jamie, as a violent 18-year-old Gravesend thug who, having nicked a car, runs off with 15-year-old Lynsey. Next he's a convicted 29-year-old killer being visited in a Buckinghamshire prison by his younger brother. Ten years on Jamie has been released and meets up in Sunderland with the daughter by Lynsey he has hardly known. Finally the action takes us back to the eve of the original getaway.
As he showed in Herons, Stephens has a fascination with marginalised figures. And here his intention is clearly to elicit our sympathy for the badly damaged Jamie. Behind the brutal exterior lurks a lost soul seemingly driven to murder to protect his vulnerable brother. And, in the father-daughter encounter, Stephens implies that redemption is a real possibility: in an achingly tender scene, Stephens shows Jamie trying to reach out to a shy teenager to whom he is an unfathomable stranger.
Only a natural dramatist could have written a scene as good as that. But the play's elliptical quality means that we have to take too much on trust. In order to savour the extent of Jamie's moral rebirth, we need to know more about his actual crime: was his victim, for instance, the evil corrupter of youth that he claims? And even his home background, with a promiscuous mother and inert stepfather, is so lightly sketched in that we are never sure what drove him off the rails. I'm all for the audience helping to author the play; but here we are asked to work overtime.
Gordon Anderson's production, a joint venture between the Court and ATC, yields an exceptional performance by Lee Ross as Jamie. With miraculous economy, he charts the character's growth from psychotic tearaway to reformed lifer who finds consolation in mechanical tasks like writing out the shipping forecast. Sally Hawkins, Laura Elphinstone and Calum Callaghan lend considered support. But, precisely because he has talent, I dare Mr Stephens to undertake the dramatist's most difficult task: that of writing a two-act play.
· Until July 17. Box office: 020-7565 5000.
