No man knows precisely how women talk when they are alone. Simon Burt, undeterred, has written his first play about relationship between two 17-year-old girls sharing a flat in the throbbing heart of downtown Wakefield. While Untouchable has the faintly hermetic quality of all the work in the Bush's Naked Talent season, it says a lot about the predatory nature of teenage friendship and our need to destroy the thing we love.
Burt sets up a strong contrast between the two girls. Lou is streetwise, sexually experienced and has no greater aim in life than to "do Wakey". Manni is an Asian virgin, pursued by the unseen Mehir; initially, she is determined to study psychology at university. Friends for nine years, the two are at first filled with the heady joys of independence and of weekend Wakefield piss-ups. Gradually, however, Manni falls apart, coming under the influence both of the vodka bottle and the hedonistic Lou. When they swap dresses for a night out, you realise that each is disastrously taking on the characteristics of the other.
Psychologically, Burt's play is very acute: he shows that friendship, whether male or female, is often based on secret envy as much as shared interest. He also explores, with surprising delicacy, the strange physical bond between the two girls: they sleep top-to-tail in the same bed and have various difficulties with boys. However, their intimacy never quite takes the form you might expect.
What I missed in Burt's play is any arresting theatricality. You feel he has watched, observed and learned about the behaviour patterns of young women on their first flight from home. Lacking the defining image of theatre, however, his play could work almost as well on radio or television.
The main plus point of seeing Natasha Betteridge's production at the Bush is that you eavesdrop on two gifted young performers. Samantha Robinson's Lou moves with conviction from ebullient perkiness to sad awareness of her own destructiveness, and of the fact that there is more to life than even Wakefield has to offer. Pooja Shah's Manni goes biliously to the dogs as she swigs from the vodka bottle with naked desperation.
The real shock, however, is to find a man writing so plausibly about loving female clubbers rather than effing-and-blinding guys.
· Until December 21. Box office: 020-7610 4224.
