In the likeably lunatic mind of Phil Porter, a girl dreams of crunching through glass bones, sexual awakening is linked inextricably to kites, and a middle-aged woman slurps gin and tonic greedily out of a model train.
Like the late novelist Angela Carter, this promising playwright evokes a fairytale world pungent with sex and subconscious fears, and his portrait of the relationship between a father and daughter enchants at the same time as it disturbs.
Possibly best known as Mr Bingley - the male love interest without a wet shirt scene in the BBC's Pride and Prejudice - Crispin Bonham Carter now takes the helm as director.
The 2001 winner of the Jerwood Young Directors Award at the Young Vic, he has collaborated with designer Philippa Kunisch to sculpt a surreal and poetic production, which opens with Mick the father cutting his daughter's hair, while shadows of the falling locks are projected on to a white screen behind them.
At what point does a father's overprotectiveness of his adolescent daughter become sexually perverse? Only the inventively alcoholic Monica seems to know in this four-hander, which is illuminated by a dazzling central performance from Mariah Gale as Emily, the 16-year-old naif who plays with her father's feelings like a kitten toying with a Christmas bauble.
Vulnerable and arch at the same time, she delivers such lines as "my hands smell like onions and chocolate" as if they were powered by an undeniable logic in a world that orbits around her burgeoning sexuality.
Emily's solipsistic flirtations are well complemented by James Duke's uptight badger of a father, Jacquette May's loopily frustrated Monica, and Simon Bubb's gently appealing evocation of Ben, Emily's first boyfriend. This is further proof that the Latchmere is growing as an important experimental centre for new writing.
Until 26 October. Information: 020 7978 7040.
Stealing Sweets & Punching People
