At first you think you are somewhere in Martin McDonagh country. But it soon becomes clear that although the accents are Irish, this is one of those plays that could be set anytime and in any place. After all, almost no country is immune to the flash-points that suddenly spark civil war and pit neighbour against neighbour and brother against sister.
Kaite O'Reilly's play shows the devastating effects of such a war on a single family eking out a living in a rural backwater. Cannily using a reverse chronology, O'Reilly charts the physical, emotional and economic havoc of conflict back to a point frozen in time as a young girl blows out the candles on her birthday cake and a son raises his rifle to take aim. The past here is indeed another country, remote, receding from memory and impossible to reclaim.
These final stunning moments are worth the wait, but O'Reilly has set herself a difficult task both structurally and emotionally, and she doesn't quite pull it off - although she gets plenty of help from Bill Hopkinson's beautifully acted and restrained production. O'Reilly takes far too long to get to the heart of the matter, and although there is some vivid writing for several scenes you feel you are watching what seems to be an obscure thriller penned by a fan of Samuel Beckett. The increasing mystery all too quickly becomes increasingly trying.
Yet for all its failings, there is something haunting about Henhouse, and also brave in the way it suggests that it is in the family we first learn about conflict and in the divided family that the first seeds of reconciliation can take root. Even the most crooked apple tree can eventually bear good fruit.
· Until October 9. Box office: 020-7503 1646.
