Philip Ridley doesn't write plays so much as dark hallucinations in which the world is skewed through his penetrating vision, so we look at it through new eyes. This two-hander, from 2000, doesn't have the baroque brilliance of 2004's Mercury Fur, and in many ways has the hallmarks of an old-fashioned thriller whose ending you guess long before it is revealed. But this 90 minutes is riveting, due not just to Ridley's writing but to some superb performances.
On the surface, this is the story of a homophobic murder. Anita (Lynda Bellingham) is the grieving mother whose son, Vincent, was found dead in the toilet of a disused East End station so infamous for its cottaging activity that locals call it "the Sodom and Gomorrah of Bethnal Green".
Since Vincent's death, Anita has had to deal with the unkindness of her neighbours, but when she flees she is pursued by Davey (Mark Field), the teenager who found Vincent's body and can't wash the dead man's face out of his mind. With the gin flowing, Anita and Davey eye each other suspiciously but settle for telling a few home truths about themselves.
In many ways the play is contrived, but what it lacks in subtlety it makes up for in passion and compassion and a blistering honesty about the destructive lies we tell each other and ourselves. The pins, placed by work colleagues who could not forgive transgression, that pierced the young, pregnant Anita's flesh are mirrored in the shards of glass that penetrated her son's eyes.
As the truth is exhumed and the dead seem to walk again there is a redemptive sense that it is through honesty in our personal relationships that absolution can be found.
· Until November 17. Box office: 0870 060 6632.
