There is rhyme but not always reason in Kathleen Oliver's play that has originality and a cracking production in its favour. Oliver's drama is that rare beast, a modern verse drama. It also celebrates the love that dare not speak its name by shouting it from the rooftops. True love, it suggests, not only needs to be spoken of, but also only finds its greatest expression in the caress of words. Here it is language rather than organs that swell in a sexy, suggestive and provocative way.
This is all very good and it only seems a pity that something so potentially modern should look backwards and be burdened with a narrative that is contrived and ridiculous. The play seems to owe much to Marivaux, but has none of that playwright's sophistication in its story. A brother and sister, Thomas and Catherine, are trying to write lyric love poetry under the tutelage of Dr Wise - not the man he appears. But while Thomas's love for the seamstress Sonja leads to verbosity and doggerel, Catherine is apparently struck dumb by her love for the same woman and the impossibility of telling her. Only by taking her brother's dreadful verses and transforming them, under the pseudonym Overripe, can she really express herself.
When Dr Wise sets up a verse contest between Thomas and the mysterious Overripe, the cross-dressing scenario becomes ever more complicated as Catherine and Sonja elope to a sapphic haven closely pursued by Thomas and Dr Wise. Soon even Thomas finds himself in a dress.
This is an evening of wit and verve but, how much you will enjoy it will depend on your taste for contrivance, pantomime and rhyming couplets. It is clever but not very deep and, despite the panache with which it is done, it can't disguise the fact that this is pastiche, not the real thing, and therefore devoid of real emotion. But it is cleverly done, the acting is sharp and there is absolutely no doubting the fact that Off the Cuff, which developed this work, is a really lively young company with heaps of talent and provided too much praise doesn't give them swollen heads, they should go far.
Until March 18. Box office: 020-7223 2223.
