I wish this struggling new theatre well, but its capacity to discover mediocre plays by good writers continues with this manipulative thriller by Hanif Kureishi that touches on serious issues while titillating us with the prospect of sex and violence.
Kureishi presents us with an odd, seemingly disparate couple: rough, working-class Cecil, and edgy, wellgroomed Jane. As he welcomes her into his Streatham flat, we learn that he is a communist and a former bus driver. She is the rich widow of a famous film director.
But the real connection is that Jane is Cecil's stepdaughter and has come to avenge herself for the sexual abuse she suffered as a teenager. What follows is an 80-minute cat and mouse game in which she threatens her stepfather with a knife while he tries to examine the reality of their relationship.
Clearly Kureishi is suggesting that memory is highly subjective. Jane recalls only cruelty and exploitation, while Cecil implies that the sex was consensual and that the relationship enriching.
But, instead of exploring conflicting recollections, Kureishi resorts to the melodramatic techniques of a 1980s American play entitled Extremities, in which a rape victim turned the tables on her attacker. We are kept on edge, not by the argument but by the question of whether Cecil will get hold of the knife or Jane will succumb to his sexual blandishments.
In the process, Kureishi plays fast and loose with probability. Why, for instance, did Cecil's wife so stoically accept the news of his liaison with her daughter?
There is also a good deal of confusion as to whether it is better to exorcise or exercise one's memories. At one point Cecil tell his stepdaughter "there's no future in the past", and at another that "the past is your capital", which seems a strange sentiment coming from a Marxist bus driver.
The result is an evening of unproductive tension in which two excellent actors, in Anthony Clark's production, prowl warily around each other. Cast against type as the brawny prole, Michael Pennington convinces you that Cecil is both the victim of romantic fixation and capable of physical cruelty.
Catherine McCormack also combines a righteous desire for retribution with a febrile emotional instability. However, the play works pruriently on our base appetites without offering anything in the way of psychological illumination.
· Until April 3. Box office: 020-7722 9301.
