Emilie Robson’s insinuating new play is structured like random journeys on the Tyne and Wear Metro – or “hopping the metty”, as teenagers Jen and Dean would have it. The two are childhood friends who like to head to the end of the line to people-watch at the airport, or to walk the long way home to South Shields by bailing out at Bede, Jarrow or Hebburn.
They tell their story – or, as she insists, Jen’s story – as mixed-up memories, linked by a collage of subway trips during which two young people find it easier to talk about dogs on the Metro – a whippet in a jacket, for instance – than say what is really on their minds.
The nearer they get to voicing the truth, the more Matthew Tuckey’s soundtrack rumbles, Drummond Orr’s strip lights flicker and the familiar yellow fittings and blue-grey upholstery of the subway set by Amy Watts seem to shake with the clatter of an incoming train.
It feels reductive to say this is a play about sexual assault. It is certainly that – a crossing of boundaries between the two friends at a party – but Robson writes with such nuance that it is equally about the complex emotions around consent, desire, companionship – and the struggle for language to make sense of it all.
Without excusing Dean’s actions, the playwright presents his violation as a tragedy for both of them. With successive Metro journeys, we see not only what was but also what nearly was.
Maria Crocker’s finely judged production draws us in with the plain-speaking charm of Sarah Balfour (Jen) and Dean Logan (Dean). More than friends, less than sweethearts, they are young people learning to know each other before they fully know themselves. They perform with honesty and tenderness in a play that is funny and sad, subtle and wise.
• At Live theatre, Newcastle, until 17 May
