Bella is not quite 30 and already misses the safety of childhood. While her demanding father, who always wanted his daughter to push herself, is dying, daddy's special little girl is celebrating her 29th birthday in a bar with friends and ex-lovers who, like Bella, are smart, successful and dissatisfied. As Bella says wistfully: "I'm 29. I'm never going to be 28 again. I am never going to be eight again. And I miss it. I've left so much behind. And it all gets lost."
Nina Raine's sparky first play is about trying to recover love, memories, the time when you thought you were invincible, the time when daddy kissed you goodnight and scared the demons under the bed away.
In the case of Bella's dad, Richard, it is also about trying to recover the words that the tumour pressing down on his brain is making him forget. Most of all this is a play about the happiness we take for granted when we are young and which, as we grow older, often eludes us, making us crabby and envious. Envy, suggest Raine, is like farting. "Everyone suffers from it. But, if you let it out, you don't smell very nice. And everyone moves away from you."
The play is stuffed with observations that glint like that one. This is a confident, promising debut which should have Channel 4 executives queuing up to turn it into a TV series. As a play it has faults: Raine seems to have stuffed in every thought she's ever had, whether on the battle of the sexes or the competiveness that corrodes, and the flashbacks with dad are sometimes awkward, as if they belong in an entirely different play.
Fortunately, Raine the director is on hand to smooth over the difficulties of Raine the playwright, and the evening is so cleverly cast and beautifully played that these unattractive characters turn out to be highly entertaining company.
· Until June 11. Box office: 020-7837 7816
