The Stage

Other Hands

Published Tuesday 21 February 2006 at 15:55 by Aleks Sierz

Stress can mess up your body. In Laura Wade’s new play, Other Hands, Hayley is a high-flying management consultant whose eight-year-old relationship to Steve, a computer buff, is heading for the rocks. But the strain of coping with unhappiness means that Hayley and Steve’s hands at first start to tingle, then feel sore, and become too painful to touch.

Is it repetitive strain injury, or a psychosomatic disorder? As the exasperated Hayley finally says she wants to sleep with someone new, Steve, a typical bloke, foolishly takes her literally. So when Hayley meets Greg through work, and Steve visits Lydia to fix her broken computer, both are exposed to temptation.

Machines, suggests Wade, are easy to fix - human beings are much more unpredictable. Written in her precise style, and with her trademark attention to the problems of communication, this is an emotionally true account of love in an age of hi-tech. It is beautifully observed, touching and funny. And a couple of the scenes are as memorable as anything in Patrick Marber’s 1997 classic Closer.

Superbly directed by Bijan Sheibani, on Paul Burgess’s stylish set - which crackles and lights up like an electrical storm during the scene changes - the evening boasts a typically bright and detailed performance by Anna Maxwell Martin as Hayley. This is well complemented by Richard Harrington’s slacker Steve, Katherine Parkinson’s goofy Lydia and Michael Gould’s Greg, a fine mix of seductive neediness and off-putting anger. One of the best Soho shows for a long time.