Over the years the Royal Court's young writers' festival has thrown up plenty of talent, including Andrea Dunbar, Michael Wynne and Leo Butler. The two writers represented here, 15-year-old Richard Leighton and 26-year-old Chloe Moss, could also have a bright future in the theatre.
Leighton's 10-minute offering shows the confrontation between two teenage boys by the school lockers. Both have reasons to be resentful of the other: Steve because his locker has been covered in graffiti; Michael because Steve told the teacher and he took the blame for a deed he claims to have had no part in. This is more than a sketch: Leighton taps into underlying tensions and brings the piece to a clever little climax.
Moss's play is really worth getting excited about - it is confident, funny, touching and has its own distinctive voice. Actually, it is more a wail of quiet despair. Teenage Tracey has a dead-end job as a checkout girl in a dead-end northern town. "I like life - just not this one," she says. She dreams of leaving and, in the meantime, strikes up a friendship with the shop security guard, Tony. Tony is one of life's losers, a gentle soul who likes reconstructing wars - he has done Vietnam and is doing the Falklands next week -and saving wounded pigeons. In Tony, Tracey finds someone she can talk to, unlike her cocky, bullying ex-boyfriend David, who has finally got himself a one-way ticket out of deadendsville.
You believe every word of this play. It is an everyday tragedy so small it would hardly make a ripple in a millpond. Almost nothing happens and in the end life goes on, and on. As Tracey points out, feeling angry is not exactly a complaint that you can take to your GP.
Richard Wilson's production is just right, not too flashy, not too understated, and precisely, perfectly acted. Both it and the play are like a playground Chinese burn - they give you pain and pleasure at the same time.
· Until November 2. Box office: 020 7565 5000.
