Jo is a struggling writer, recovering from a nervous breakdown. She has returned to live with her lover Sally, close to the deprived London neighbourhood where she was born and brought up. But all is not well. She is haunted by memories of her great aunt Clara, who suffered a stroke and ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Her relationship with Sally is under strain, and things take a turn for the worse when Tennessee Williams starts popping up, first in her computer, then in her living room. And it is not just his taste in waistcoats that is causing her pain.
From its clunky beginning to its all too pat resolution, it is hard to believe much about Linda Wilkinson's play, which struggles to make drama out of memories of a childhood crisis. Jo just can't come to terms with how her family treated Clara, bundling her off to a psychiatric hospital when she could no longer bring in a wage to the (positively Dickensian) family home. She recalls a visit to the hospital, where she found Clara dying amid her own dribble.
Tennessee, who has now taken up permanent residence in the living room, stiff gin and tonic in hand, advises Jo that as a writer she must "use the pain". After all, he knows all about pain and mental illness: he never got over the guilt of what happened to his sister Rose, who was forcibly lobotomised. Her broken spirit haunted his plays.
The best passages of writing are those of pastiche Williams dialogue, and Jay Benedict as the American playwright makes the most of his opportunities. But most of the rest of the interchanges are banal, and although the play attempts to tug at your heart-strings, Jo's character is never sufficiently well-drawn to win your sympathy. It certainly doesn't help that Julie-Kate Olivier sounds like a duchess who has mislaid a few aitches.
Playwrights need productions to help them learn their craft, but this one should have remained behind the closed doors of the rehearsal room.
· Until February 17. Box office: 020-7793 9193.
