We kid ourselves that our lives are purposeful journeys, that we know where we are going. Like the writer writing a story, we think we control the plot. But we don't. We mess up and we fail.
In Will Eno's latest play, a love story goes bad (really bad), a play gets written in painful fits and starts, snow falls, it turns to slush. Maybe spring arrives. This is a play to remind us why sunsets make us sad, how nostalgia is like fog and why we live our lives as though we are in mourning for them. It is a play that, like our lives, has no predetermined ending, no destination. Except death. A depressing thought.
However, Eno's play is not at all depressing. Set in a private mental institution where the staff are every bit as mad as the patients, if not dottier, The Flu Season is stingingly funny and really rather beautiful in a wonderful, abrasive little production that sees director Erica Whyman on top form.
It must be said that like Eno's previous play Tragedy, also premiered at the Gate, The Flu Season can be exasperating - at times, dare I suggest, even a little boring. But it is not a play that you can lose patience with, because Eno has a good theatrical brain and a quite startling theatrical voice. His smart-alec games with form and style are very witty, youthful and enormously engaging.
The running commentary provided by Martin Parr's prologue and Alan Cox's epilogue is not just a clever device; it adds to the emotional layers of the play. Watching this piece is like watching somebody putting on a brave face, pretending that they are all right when they are actually falling apart.
Raquel Cassidy's Woman, a loser in love, is like a beautiful smudge who is rubbed out. She just disappears. And life for everyone else goes on with a shrug. Because we all know, don't we, that stuff just happens, doesn't it?
· Until May 3. Box office: 020-7229 0706.
