In a world that is both blank and confusing, the only thing to hang on to in The City, Martin Crimp's absorbing new play, is the characters. And then, of course, they are in turns both bank and confusing, too.
Luckily, each part is exquisitely played. An hour long, you come out having held your breath, it seems, for most of its brief journey into this spare, unsparing world.
Chris, a brilliant, razor-edged Benedict Cumberbatch, works in the City, until "restructuring in America" leads him to lose his job. His wife Clair, Hattie Morahan, is a translator with an emotional crush on a writer.
Living nearby is the emotionally crushed, physically awkward Jenny, a nurse whose husband is abroad, working as an army medic in some horrific, pointless war. Somewhere in Clair and Chris's white, sterile city flat, two children play with blood and lock themselves in their room from the inside.
Meanwhile, a secret diary, given to Clair by her writer and discovered by her children, travels through the script like an unexploded bomb.
The City is a study in what happens to both places and people when put under extraordinary pressure. These are ordinary people, suffering from the emotional bends. And it feels almost painfully contemporary.
The credit crunch wipes out Chris's job and his paper-thin self-esteem. The war creates a hero out of Clair's writer, but - as explained in the most powerful single scene in the play - creates a living hell for its combatants and victims. Not all of this pungent play works: the ending itself is disappointing. But then, this is not a play that would invite an easy conclusion. Nothing comes easy when you live in such interesting times.
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