There is a moment towards the end of Cowboy Mouth when a giant crustacean is sitting comfortably on a bed listening to a man and a woman play rock music; it makes you wonder just what the characters in this play are taking. Then you wonder what Sam Shepard and Patti Smith were taking when they penned this little number back in 1971, when rock'n'roll really was the new rock'n'roll. Cowboy Mouth is weird, wild and rather wonderful, albeit in minor key.
Cavale and Slim are holed up in one room. She has kidnapped him at gunpoint and taken him away from his wife and family with dreams of turning him into a rock'n'roll star, the new saviour. They have fallen in love, but love is wearing rather thin now that boredom has set in and Slim is less than keen to play the game. And my, can Cavale play games, often featuring her dead, stuffed black crow and her gun. Her life is a tapestry of stories in which reality and fantasy are tightly knit and life and death, the mythic and the mundane, go cheek by jowl.
This Shepard fragment speaks eloquently of the pain of a generation for whom Jagger and Dylan turned out not to be rock'n'roll Jesuses after all. It looks forward thematically and stylistically to his future plays, particularly Tooth of Crime and Fool for Love. It also offers its own excitements in the lovers' duels between Cavale and Slim, which are stamped with their own precise musicality, sometimes wild and cacophonous and sometimes sweet and lyrical.
Matt Peover's astute production has the benefit of an atmospheric and useful design by Christian Zollenkopf that picks up on all the drama's motifs, as well as two fine, energetic performances from Natalie Turner-Jones as Cavale, a woman intent on reinventing herself, and Ben Duhl as the man who can't quite buy into the rock'n'roll dream.
It is a brave choice of play for Peover, who might have shown off his obvious talents more flashily with a classic text. But then, as Shepherd's play suggests, the world would be a pretty grim place without risk, dreams and especially imagination.
· Until August 18. Box office: 020-7223 2223.
