The clock is ticking towards deadline and the production office is having a collective seizure. The editor has gone missing - taking the missus to see The Lion King - and in the offices of a daily tabloid, a crisis is looming. Well, several crises, actually. Some professional, others of an entirely personal nature.
The assistant editor, a bullet-proof Scot, has got it in for the newly appointed night editor, the flashy, university-educated Baz. Baz was once an item with libel specialist Abigail, who is tonight's legal eagle, checking the proofs for stories that might attract lawsuits. Amid the chaos sits old-timer Howard, the revise sub-editor, who still remembers the days when journalists knew that Woking wasn't in Kent and that battalion has two Ts. Howard sips claret from a picnic hamper as he corrects other people's mistakes. What none of them know is that tonight's front page splash, a juicy story about a children's TV presenter, is about to send ripples through all their lives and make and break careers.
Sharp, slick, cynical and howlingly funny, Steve Thompson's first play may not tell you anything you don't already know about tabloid journalism, but it lines up the cliches to considerable effect. It is a modern The Front Page with balls. It is also a remarkably assured debut, and a reminder that the Bush Theatre's honourable legacy of spotting plays with real zing and commercial potential remains intact. I haven't laughed so much or so loudly in the theatre for a long time.
You could perhaps quibble that Damages doesn't really probe the tabloid culture or mentality very deeply. However, it spins its moral conundrums with sly style until the characters are caught up in a sticky, inescapable web. It gets a cracking production, too, from Roxana Silbert with a marvellous quartet of performances that squeeze every grim, gleeful laugh from the script.
· Until July 3. Box office: 020-7610 4224.
