Nadine is an artist who has been starving in a garret - or rather a basement - when a chance encounter brings her into contact with Adam, a wealthy American art collector and gallery owner. Her boyfriend Jed, a philosophy student, has spent the last nine years thinking while his debts rise. So he gets a job with multinational subsidiary, Mercury Shoes, a company whose canny advertising campaign ensures that when you buy a pair of trainers, you're not merely buying something to put on your feet, you're buying into a dream and lifestyle. As Retail Communications Liaisons Sales Partner Representative, Jed is soon unsuccessfully trying to flog the branded trainers to Mary, an anti-globalisation activist who wants a life without packaging.
Drew Pautz's play is a variation on a theme: the commodification of art and life and the way everything, even desire, sex and politics, can be reduced to a transaction and a bag with a brand name on the side. It is about ownership too: in relationships, ideas, the spaces we share, even of art itself. I'm inclined to think that the strength of the argument is diluted by the fact that to see the play you will have to make a transaction and purchase a ticket to do so, although activists might like to try and get in for free.
In fact, too much of this evening is taken up in flogging the play as a product that will slip down easily without us having to worry too much about the real issues at stake. Pautz's script comes with a high-gloss veneer, and is as witty, lithe and empty as a rom-com. After the first couple of scenes I quite simply ceased to believe a word of it.
· Until April 7. Box office: 0870 429 6883.
