Emma Hemingford has written and co-stars in this promising debut play about a nervously cohabiting young couple. It’s a kind of angsty Private Lives for Generation Z and what it lacks in physical action it makes up for in its psychological acuity, showing two people bound together by a mix of ratty recrimination and fear of failure.
Jess is a young actor, just out of drama school, living on hopes and dreams; her partner, Mark, is a City trader indifferent to the arts. But their relationship is marred by an incident in which, on the way back to their Bethnal Green flat, Mark flinched in the face of a potentially violent mugger. This blights the couple’s future life and underscores the fact that, in their aspirations and attitudes, they are marching to different rhythms.
The reappearance of the mugger in their private dreams feels contrived. What is good about the play is that, while acknowledging the daily threats to which women are exposed, it refuses to side with one gender. It suggests that, even in an age of supposed sexual equality, no loving relationship is ever easy or guilt-free.
Rosalind Brody’s direction is swift and the two main performers are excellent. Hemingford, who resembles Jodie Comer, hides Jess’s inner anxiety under a wealth of radiant smiles and, as Mark, Joseph Reed conveys a familiar masculine panic about being unsure what role he is meant to play. “Be brave, young lovers, and follow your star,” sang the governess in The King and I but, as this piece sharply suggests, that’s not so easy when you’re yoked together in restless ecstasy.
• At the Old Red Lion, London, until 15 June
