We agonise about a two-tier health service. I also worry about a two-tier theatre system, in which the financial gulf between the big-city reps and the rest grows ever wider. But, though the Nuffield belongs in the lower financial league, Patrick Sandford has an enviable record in presenting new plays. Here he has come up with a timely, intriguing piece by Penny Gold contrasting Arabic and Anglo-Saxon attitudes.
Two parallel stories are told by Gold. In a tilted concrete box, wittily designed by Robin Don, we follow the fortunes of a Hackney-based ex-hippie mum, Lizzie, and her two disaffected children. Daughter Saph is a go-getting futures trader, while son Zeb is an apprentice jockey. Meanwhile, stage right, Ahmed caresses a four-wheel drive and describes his country's transition from sheep-rearing backwater to oil-rich Gulf state. In his case, however, material improvement has led to a break with his son, who enthusiastically embraces Allah.
Gold ironically compares and contrasts two forms of filial rebellion. In the west, she suggests, children reject past idealism in favour of careerist individualism, while in the Middle East, confronted by global capitalism, they are more likely to turn to religion. But it's a large generalisation to draw from two examples, and is contradicted by all sorts of evidence, including the recent school-pupil protests over the Iraq war. Technically, Gold's play also suffers from the fact that we see Lizzie and her family in action while Ahmed's story emerges through monologues: in the end, it's always better to show than to tell.
Where the play scores heavily is in its social detail. Gold shows a particularly vivid knowledge of the dubious ethos of the turf, and reveals how Zeb is tricked by his Irish mentor into losing a race in order to bring down his horse's handicap. In Sandford's production the family scenes are also abrasively played with Paola Dionisotti's frizzy-haired, anti-materialist mum coming into conflict both with her money-mad daughter, given a fine nonchalant eroticism by Claire Goose, and her horse-mad son, wirily incarnated by Callum Dixon. Hassani Shapi's amiably confiding Ahmed also links the play's two worlds by reminding us of the long tradition of Arab horse-breeding and the pathos of rejection by one's children. But, good as Gold is, her point about the differences and similarities between two cultures would be even better if the Arabs enjoyed equal stage-time.
· Until May 24. Box office: 023-8067 1771.
