The Stage

Eigengrau

Published Tuesday 16 March 2010 at 10:40 by Aleks Sierz

London is the capital of loneliness, and, in this engaging flat-share drama, four twentysomethings find that their search for love runs anything but smoothly. So after New Age scatterbrain Rose hooks up with Mark, who works in marketing, the result is - for him - a one-night stand, but when she won’t take no for an answer, both their flatmates get drawn into the affair.

Sinead Matthews (Rose) in Eigengrau at the Bush theatre Photo: Tristram Kenton

Mark gets interested in Rose’s flatmate, the feminist Cassie, while Mark’s flatmate, the unemployed Tim, becomes besotted with Rose. These four characters are beautifully and observantly sketched out - Mark’s masculine manipulations contrast with Tim’s sadness at the loss of his Mum, whose ashes he keeps in a cat-shaped jar, while Cassie’s rationalist activism clashes with Rose’s fantasies and mysticism.

Elegantly plotted, Penelope Skinner’s play is a strong mix of comedy and excruciating embarrassment. There’s a blow job scene that must be one of the saddest sex acts ever depicted on stage, and a climactic act of self-mutilation that is almost unwatchable. At the same time, by the end, there’s also a sense of poetic justice in a play whose title, allusively, refers to the colour seen by the eye in perfect darkness.

Designer Hannah Clark has turned the Bush into a space that evokes the London Underground, the lifeline that links the two flats in the play. On a traverse staging, with a chequered floor and only four red plastic chairs for props, director Polly Findlay occasionally struggles to use the constricted arena effectively, but her cast deliver excellent performances.

Sinead Matthews invests Rose with a narcissistic self-confidence that contrasts well with Alison O’Donnell’s questioning Cassie, while Geoffrey Streatfeild’s dynamic Mark is matched by John Cummins’ needy Tim. A dark, but very bright jewel of a play.