Charlotte Eilenberg's first play, dealing with two London-based Jewish families, raises familiar issues such as guilt, identity, generational-conflict and the battle between remembrance and forgetting. But Eilenberg shows a real gift for conveying the volatility of family life.
Chekhov, I suspect, is her god; and, like the master, she uses property as a source of tension. The first act, set in 1968, shows Bruno and his brother-in-law Leo deciding to sell a cottage they and their families have used for 13 years. All the adults are exiled Berlin Jews and there is a certain buzz when they discover that the buyer, Lisa, is herself a Berliner. But Leo, in thrall to his father who lost his factory to the Nazis, makes one stipulation: Lisa, the daughter of a Berlin property dealer, must apologise for the Holocaust.
I was totally gripped by Eilenberg's first act, which deftly interweaves domestic and global issues. Bruno and his wife, Anna, very well played by David Horovitch and Margot Leicester, jib at Leo's inherited anger. But thanks to a riveting performance by Anton Lesser, you also understand Leo's unforgiving fury. As so often in family life, a major moral crisis releases a whole catalogue of mutual minor resentments. But in the second half she whisks us forward 30 years to show the impact on the next generation. While not without interest, it lacks the urgency of the first act. We understand how Leo's son has been driven by a desire to reject his father's bullying absolutism. But when Lisa reappears to make an unexpected offer, we are into the realm of narrative contrivance. Plot takes precedence over moral debate; and everything hinges on a revelation which makes nonsense of Leo's historical ferocity.
But no-one expects a first-time dramatist to get everything right; and there is enough passion in the writing to make one hope Eilenberg carries on. And, apart from Lesser's hypnotic display of unpredictability, there is good work from James Clyde as his son and from Miranda Foster as Bruno's daughter. However flawed, it is a promising play about wounds that never heal.
· Until June 1. Box office: 020-7722 9301.
