"Choice culture" has spoilt Britain's twentysomethings. At least that was the finding of 24-year-old Ella Hickson, who wrote this award-winning play after asking friends what defined their generation. "Apathy" - their near-unanimous answer - doesn't promise dramatic riches but Hickson intends to challenge that notion here.
Before the play begins, audience apathy is fended off. In a contrivance that both mocks and indulges our have-your-say culture, we choose four characters (from an available eight) from cards in the foyer showing their pictures and a brief profile.
The four with the most votes - tonight a teenager besotted with a femme fatale, a single mum, a 7/7 survivor and a woman who has cheated on her boyfriend - deliver well-crafted monologues that are often funny and sweetly sad. But they suffer too from laboured epiphanies and strained performances. Hickson seems determined to give us something to believe in, but it's never quite clear what.
It was hard - for this twentysomething, at least - to stop her eyes straying to the other four silent characters on stage, wondering what they might have had to say. Case proved?
