The excellent Arcola theatre proves its worth yet again with the opening play in a German season that also includes a revival of Franz Xaver Kroetz's The Nest and a rare staging of Brecht and Weill's Seven Deadly Sins. First on track, though, is a drama that is young, raw and edgy, set in the shadowy world of Berlin stations. In Naomi Dawson's eye-catching and entirely useful design, train tracks split the audi-torium in two and iron fences define the territory of the gang of teenage boys who spend their nights "surfing" the trains and dicing with death.
Only this night, in a squeal of brakes, a blare of horn and a terrible flash of light, young Fraggle, attempting to surf between one station and the next, slips between the train's wheels. He has been well and truly casseroled, as the Turkish outsider of the group Izmir ("Kebab-brain", as the others call him) puts it. Three of the boys inform the youngest member of the group, Olif (who hero-worships Fraggle), that his disappearance is due to a sudden desire to go and live in Venezuela.
The image of Venezuela, a place about which they know little, becomes a haven from the stark realities of their lives, a place where you can surf trains all day, successfully pan for gold and retire at 17. Olif appears to entirely believe the fantasy, lapping up the letters one boy pens in Fraggle's name. But there is a sense in which it gives all the boys, with the exception of the excluded Izmir, solace.
Guy Helminger's play reminds me of Manfred Karge's The Conquest of the South Pole. Its distinct use of teenage argot heightens the exchanges between the boys and the sense of their own private world. It is a slight play, but one that packs a punch, and Tiffany Watt-Smith's production, although occasionally lacking pace, plays it for everything it is worth with a cracking young cast.
· Until March 29. Box office: 020-7503 1646.
