Eva is an actress. She turns up at one of Her Majesty's prisons to do a workshop with the male inmates, armed only with her copy of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, her belief in the transforming power of art and her idealism. She is in for a rude awakening. But first she meets prison officer Catesby, who confirms everything Eva already thinks she knows. PO Catesby is tough, cynical and seemingly without pity for the men she locks up. Give them an inch and she knows they'll take a couple of miles. When it comes to them and us, PO Catesby knows exactly where she stands. But so does Eva.
Ron Hutchinson's cunning little play is 90 minutes of hard, fast, thought-provoking entertainment that gives you back your faith in the fringe. It may not have the depth or subtlety of Hutchinson's great classic play about Northern Irish politics, Rat in the Skull, but in the unspoken, undeclared war between naive Eva and battle-weary Catesby, there is a similar thrilling tension, and the drama so cleverly twists and turns that you sometimes find yourself surprised by which side you are coming down on.
There are some things that don't quite add up - surely a woman civilian would never be left alone with five male inmates - but otherwise, the whole thing has a real whiff of authenticity. And where it could so easily have been just another prison drama, Lags is made more interesting by the way it constantly undercuts itself. You never quite know whether Catesby is right when she claims the men are not just villains but also expert con men or whether, for a few brief moments, Eva has unlocked the doors of the prison and allowed some of them to fly.
The play transcends its prison setting, probing wider issues of common human decency, the way we treat each other and who packs the murderer's sandwiches before he sets out for a day of massacring Bosnian women and children.
Caroline Hunt's production is tough, uncompromising and honed to muscled perfection. The acting is peerless: you feel as if you know every individual man intimately. A real treat.
· Until April 13. Box office: 020-7223 2223.
