The extra star is for the glorious, sweet-talking promise of this first play by Trevor Williams, a black writer who has clearly got what it takes. Talkin' Loud is a bit of a mess, and it isn't going to win its author any prizes for structure. On the other hand, it feels as if it has been spewed straight from the guts.
Written in a slightly heightened and nuanced language that turns the ordinary exchanges of the streets into a kind of rough poetry, Williams's play is set in a London housing estate. Here Joshua is studying for his A-levels, watched over like a hawk by his elder brother Carl, a former amateur boxing champion who now specialises in dodgy "security" work. Making up for the education he never had, Carl is determined that Joshua should go to university, even if that means hiring a private tutor. To Carl's annoyance, however, Joshua would prefer to make music, and the tutor turns out to be a smart black woman.
The choices and pressures facing young men is the play's subject, and if this is hardly new, it is made to seem so through some delicate characterisations. There is a touchingly intimate yet casual friendship between Joshua and his easy-going friend, Kwame, who in one of the play's best scenes admits that he has never seen a real live elephant. This somehow symbolises the confining smallness of the world that those on the estate inhabit. The cock of the walk with a gun in his pocket is a nobody in the world beyond. As Carl recognises, the smaller you feel, the louder you have to shout. It is the unrelenting noise that eventually does for him.
Paul Higgins's fine production strips everything down, and there are very nice performances particularly from Patrick Regis as the coiled, confused Carl and Samuel Anderson as Kwame.
· Until March 13. Box office: 020-7978 7040.
