In its early days the National paired Strindberg's Miss Julie with Shaffer's Black Comedy. By a strange quirk of fate the Donmar follows its recent update of Strindberg with Charlotte Jones's ingenious variation on Shaffer: both writers are fascinated by the notion of darkness as a source of self-revelation. But, while I enjoyed Jones's 80-minute piece, it proves that brevity has its dramatic drawbacks.
Jones adroitly interweaves the stories of three neighbouring families temporarily united by a power-cut.
Louisa and Barnaby are young marrieds who, after losing their first child, are afraid to commit to their new baby. John is a repressed gay living with his old mum and needing police protection after false accusations of paedophilia.
Strangest of all are Brian and Janet: he is a guilthaunted lorry-driver, she is possessed by cancer fears and neither has had any real contact with their secluded 14-year-old son in six months.
Having written eloquently about a dysfunctional middleclass family in Humble Boy, Jones now widens her territory. Modern urban life, she suggests, is filled with desperation: what is worse, in the absence of any real community, we lead increasingly sealed-off lives. But she shows how imposed darkness forces people to confront home truths and make temporary contact with their neighbours. Having done so, they quickly return to a marginally modified version of their familiar isolation.
As a vision of London life, it is certainly tenable. And Jones writes particularly well about the media-fostered fear that pervades urban existence: everyone in the play is scared of something. But, because Jones's play takes place in real time, you become acutely conscious of how she compresses too many crises. Sexual solitude is one of her themes: even so it beggars belief that Barnaby, having popped next door to borrow a candle, would quickly end up in bed with the desolate Janet.
I welcome the trend towards short plays. But brevity is the architect of convenience as well as the soul of wit; and here you are left with too many unanswered questions.
But Anna Mackmin's surefooted production boasts a brilliant composite set by Lez Brotherston and lighting by David Hersey which makes darkness visible. Anastasia Hille as the demented young mother, Brid Brennan as the supposed cancer-victim, Roger Lloyd Pack as her murderobsessed husband and Sian Phillips as the aged mum peering suspiciously at her boiled egg through a microscope also create richly inhabited characters. But, even if Jones is acutely sensitive to urban angst, you feel that her play, like her characters, needs room to breathe.
· Until April 24. Box office: 020 7369 1732
