Amid the grot and grime of Soho a spanking new theatre has arisen. And for anyone who remembers the original Soho Poly, a cramped basement off Oxford Circus, it is astonishing to think it has grown into this spacious 180-seat playhouse and writers' centre in Dean Street. Fittingly, its first full-length production is also winner of the 1998 Verity Bargate award. It was Bargate who kicked off the idea of a West End fringe space devoted to new work.
Toby Whithouse's play is a relatively engaging piece about the lack of ethics in Essex man. Set in a greasy spoon in Southend run by a Russian immigrant family, it deals with attempts to escape from a stifling background. Nick Malinoff, who has to cope with an alcoholic mother, an absentee father and a crippled uncle, sees a way out when an estuary villain offers him the chance to do a spot of London arson. To the dismay of his doting younger brother and his moralistic uncle, he swallows the bait, but one waits to see if family honour will triumph over voracious greed.
Whithouse clearly knows his Essex. To a no-hoper like Nick, who earns his living in a local car showroom, the West End seems as glamorous as Moscow did to Chekhov's three sisters. His chum Dougie, a Mephistopheles of the Essex marshes, also accurately embodies a certain kind of intransigent Thatcherite selfhood.
As an actor himself, Whithouse knows how to write juicy dialogue. He's less good on the mechanics of plot: you feel it's a mistake to keep the Russian mother as a disembodied off-stage voice, and for the cafe to lack visible customers. The play's moral dilemma, hingeing on whether his brother and uncle should shop Nick to the cops, is also sketched in, rather than fully debated.
But the play earns its keep through its social accuracy and evocation of seaside desperation. Jonathan Lloyd's production is well acted by Justin Salinger as the Porsche-hungry Nick, Paul Chequer as his hero-worshipping younger brother and Robin Soans as the Russian uncle who represents old immigrant values. Betjeman wrote of Essex's "sweet, uneventful countryside"; Whithouse's play suggests that its towns are somewhat sour, ethics-free zones.
Until May 13. Box office: 020-7478 0100. ***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible
