This is an astonishing event: not just a first-rate revival of a 1976 play by Franz Xaver Kroetz, but a reminder of the potency of realism. At a time when style tends to dominate content, it proves that nothing is more gripping in theatre than social, psychological and economic truth.
Kroetz, Bavarian by birth and a one-time Marxist, minutely charts the growing relationship between two middle-aged people. Martha is a fiercely independent, habitually lonely, specialist tripe-butcher; Otto, who suddenly enters her life, is a selfish, truculent factory worker who wants all the sex and comfort Martha can provide without sacrificing his precious "freedom". The two are drawn together by mutual need. What we witness, partly through acted events and partly through Martha's diary entries, is how they are driven apart, not just by quirks of character, but by social conditioning.
What makes Kroetz an exceptional dramatist is that he links behaviour to economics. Martha, as a thriving businesswoman, meticulously records her daily takings. Otto, while sponging off her superior earning power, also sees it as a threat to his desire for domination. Without a hint of patronage or condescension, Kroetz shows how both characters are victims of circumstance. Martha has a "lively imagination" but is isolated by her profession, whereas Otto is part of the pack but alienated from his feelings. Kroetz's bitterest irony is that it is by finally penetrating Otto's boozy, binge-driven, bumptious carapace that Martha makes herself most vulnerable.
This, you feel, is life as it is lived. The only cavil about Daniel Kramer's fine production is that Soutra Gilmour's design opts for picturesque dowdiness. Martha's shop should have a pristine brightness rather than blood-streaked walls, and her sitting-room here has the aspect of a garish slum. But, even if the design misses the social point, the acting takes your breath away.
Ann Mitchell is just about perfect as Martha. The set of her features and her slightly turned-down mouth suggest a woman conditioned to solitude - yet she always implies Martha's vivid inner life, and flares wonderfully into skittishness when she goes to a fancy-dress ball as a black-bonneted Eliza Doolittle. Close-cropped and physically imposing, Simon Callow conveys Otto's cocksure quality by something as simple as the upward tilt of the cigarette constantly clamped to his mouth. At the same time, his nervous defensiveness when he insists that Martha wear protective glasses under her sunlamp reveals a man terrified of his own feelings. The performances, like the play itself in Anthony Vivis's translation, remind you that theatre is never better than when it conveys the texture of reality.
· Until February 8. Box office: 020-7620 3494.
