Four star rating This story is the world of upwardly mobile 20-something best friends, Nick and Joe. Together they go out looking for sex and fun, playing games, sharing experiences – no secrets hidden from each other, especially stories of sexual encou

Four star rating

This story is the world of upwardly mobile 20-something best friends, Nick and Joe. Together they go out looking for sex and fun, playing games, sharing experiences - no secrets hidden from each other, especially stories of sexual encounters. Now Nick has met his ideal woman, Lucy, small, pretty, long blonde hair. He dreams of a house, a garden and lots of kids.

But he reckons without Adriana. She appears to be a simple, childlike creature. She is Italian, mad for kinky sex and adores him. They have never been partners, he has made love to her five times and hasn't even seen her for seven months but, deciding to do the decent thing, he visits her to tell her they can never meet again.

He shows he cares for her, chides her for living on Pot Noodles in a bedsit underneath the Westway flyover.

Finally, he tells her about his relationship with Lucy. She seems to be cool about it, but deliberately seduces him with pictures of herself dressed as a schoolgirl.

It is then that he makes the mistake that has lasting consequences, destroying everything he holds dear in the world.

Tom Harper is handsome and distraught as Nick and Samuel James is a lovable Jack the Lad as Joe, although in the end he is the only honest person in the entire play.

Susanna Fiore is suitably childlike as the manipulative Adriana and Victoria Shalet makes Lucy into the kind of cutie pie that men dream of. In addition, there is a surprise comedy performance from Alexander Warner as Rich, the well-named plutocratic outsider of the group.

It may sound like a plot from some TV soap but in fact it is excellently written. Dan Muirden has a gift for comic natural dialogue and the consummate acting of the five-strong cast, sympathetically nurtured by director Jamie Harper, makes this play e nthralling to watch and destined to create ethical arguments wherever it is played.

I happen to know this from personal experience.

Until April 21.

Aline Waites