A strange, morbid and yet uplifting evening, this double bill of old plays staged by young directors dwells on the fragility of our lives and the fact that we never know when tragedy will overtake us.
The less well-known, and therefore in some ways the more interesting of the two, is Maurice Maeterlinck's 1894 Interior, which tells of a group of people bringing terrible news to a family whose silent, unruffled domestic happiness is illuminated by lamplight and glimpsed through the windows. This could easily just be a clever exercise in style, but director Christopher Heimann, much aided by a design in which the solid lines of the house dissolve into oblivion like happiness itself, keeps the whole thing grounded in reality. The effect is of a very heightened Pinter play. Although filmic in style, it is a piece that could only be done in the theatre; and it gives you a sense of having peered into lives of people who have forgotten to draw the curtains.
Brian Friel's Winners, normally performed in a double bill with Losers, but sitting thematically very nicely here, is more familiar and more traditional. None the less it works its own magic, particularly as Elaine Symons and Michael Legge are cracking as the puppy-like, squabbling teenage lovers trembling on the brink of a future that will disappear beneath their feet. Dawn Walton's production confidently lays out these young lives, but there is some uncertainty in the other performances.
That said, it is a measure of the power of both productions that I longed to leap on to the stage and yell "Stop!", in a futile attempt to prevent the inexorable slide from happiness to despair.
· Until June 3. Box office: 020-7928 6363.
