Adolescence, we are told, now continues until you are at least in your mid-30s, a time that used to be known as early middle-age. It is perhaps no surprise then that the twentysomething Londoners in Simon Bowen's play flail around like emotional toddlers.
There is the would-be actor who waits for his big break with a series of part-time jobs that exist in the shadowy world between the legal and illegal, and the young entrepreneur who prides herself on her management skills and ability to motivate her staff, but who is incapable of communicating with her elderly father. There's Sophie: unhappy in her temp job and in her relationship with headhunter Alex (played by Andrew Lincoln), she longs for something "concrete" in her life; while Chris is so lost he just keeps taking off and travelling to try to find himself.
If you live in the metropolis, you will know these people. The lives of these young city-dwellers touch and skid away in a drama whose disconnected form seems to echo the disconnected lives of its protagonists. London itself is the other main character in this coolly focused, clever and cleverly acted production. A dark, savage, glittering, buy-and-sell place, a painted whore with the pox.
This is an impressive full-length (that now means 90 minutes) debut from a young writer who taps into all the seething anger that lurks behind the city's smart, fashionable, civilised facade and then explodes.
Simon Bowen's painful, funny play gets into the brains and hearts of young people, who want for nothing materially but seem to have misplaced their souls. He writes dialogue that emerges from his characters' mouths in fractured cliches, as if they have all spent too much time speed-reading psychobabble. But these turn out, as cliches sometimes can, to reflect genuine despair and confusion. I left the theatre feeling unusually relieved to have hit middle-age.
Until June 8. Box office: 020-7452 3000.
