Appearances can certainly play tricks. On the face of it, and especially for the first few scenes, Airsick looks like just one more insubstantial drama about troubled metropolitan thirtysomethings riddled with ontological angst and relationship crises.
The acting is uneasy, too; the actresses playing long-time best friends Lucy (Celia Robertson) and Scarlet (Susannah Doyle) seem awkwardly miscast. And then, with only the subtlest shift in gear, everything is suddenly different and the audience is hooked.
"Is there a point where we're broken in a way that can't be mended?" is the question that Emma Frost has chosen to worry at in her commendable playwriting debut. Does the abuse - emotional and physical - that Lucy and Scarlet suffered as children mean that their adult lives are irreparably blighted?
Will uptight American Joe or Kiwi drifter Gabriel be the one to fill the black hole threatening to consume Lucy?
Frost would do well to wean herself off a dependence on would-be profound metaphors - the aforementioned black holes, everything connected with flying - but this aside, it's the sustained high quality of her writing that shines through in Mike Bradwell's polished production.
As the women muddle on, with Robertson and Doyle slipping into their parts like feet into an initially ungiving pair of shoes, our attention is retained by a series of deft touches.
Instead of being allowed to proceed in a strictly linear fashion, a phone conversation between the friends is intercut by brief bursts of monologue from an increasingly spiteful Joe (Eric Loren).
Es Devlin's versatile, black, panelled set provides the perfect backdrop to these lives seemingly stranded on a conveyor belt of repeated mistakes.
Until 8 November. Information: 020 7610 4224.
Airsick
