It's 1968. Mum, Dad and eight-year-old Morag are motoring down the road of life listening to Cilla Black when, irritated by the incessant female chit-chat, Dad jumps out the Morris Minor and disappears.
For the next 10 years, Mum and Morag are stranded by the edge of the road. Dad eventually returns in a Mercedes, but by then the women have made a life for themselves. However, as Morag grows up, more changes are in store.
We've all heard of the glass ceiling that prevents women getting the top jobs in industry and the arts, but the glass wall of Danusia Iwaszko's singular play is even more insidious; the attitudes and different emotional outlooks that separate the female from the male within the family. While Dad eradicates smallpox, Mum and Morag are relegated to the roadside where they succeed in creating an emotional map of the world for themselves that is threatened by Morag's growing independence.
What you clearly see is how confidently our daughters go out into the world blithely unaware of the sacrifices that the previous generation of women has made for them.
I would guess that this is a highly autobiographical play. It is certainly distinctive, although when you are watching it you can never quite find its centre.
A production with a wilder, more surreal and heightened edge may well help. But it is beautifully acted and the litany of 1970s references, from Green Shield stamps to Pinky and Perky, ensures that this brave little show about the mechanisms we employ to ensure our survival slips down nicely.
· Until November 20. Box office: 020-7978 7040.
