The Queens Hotel in Leeds may yet be classified as one of the great theatrical landmarks of Britain. It was the setting (or somewhere very like it) for Sarah Kane's Blasted, and now Oliver Emmanuel's drama takes residence in a room on the second floor. But whereas Kane took her cue from the gory horror of slasher movies, Emmanuel is indebted to the crepuscular world of film noir.
For Douglas and Laura, it is a case of love at first sight: which is tricky, he being a store detective and she being a thief. But after a cursory inspection of the stolen items, the couple repair to the Queens where she drops her knickers and he drops the charges.
Then she vanishes, leaving Douglas and her sister Poppy to pick up an increasingly macabre trail of missing baby clothes, a baby's dummy and, ultimately, a missing baby. Emmanuel's great sleight of hand is that we never actually get to see Laura herself - she exists only in the occasionally contradictory accounts of Douglas and Poppy - so one is left puzzling over the disappearance of a character who never appears to begin with.
Emmanuel teases out this ambiguity extremely well: he has effectively written a three-handed drama for two actors, inviting the audience's suppositions to fill in the gaps. Occasionally, the gaps widen to look like holes in the fabric, yet it is all bound together with a thread of symbolism involving an injured magpie the sisters nursed as children.
Sam Brown's spare and engaging production adds some felicitous touches of visual poetry, and the performances from Alison Pargeter and Liam McKenna are impeccably matched. Emmanuel's drama is assuredly noir, though it is far from black and white.
· In rep until June 8. Box office: 0113-213 7700.
