Christopher Shinn is a 26-year-old American writer who has already made an impact here with Four and Other People. But, while this new play continues his fascination with the quiet desperation of American lives, it has a self-consciously literary quality and somewhat tantalising obliqueness: if anything, it is the direction and acting that make the evening hum.
Shinn's setting is a New England beach where the distant echoes, in the first part, are not just of waves but of other plays. Dora has come to meet her flaky ex-lover, Ed, who is in hock to a mobster after being robbed of a stash of ecstasy pills he was supposed to deliver: shades of Shopping and Fucking. But the hapless Ed has a scheme to make up the missing 10 grand by robbing the video store where Dora works: a touch of American Buffalo. It is only after Ed's suicide, when Dora has a nocturnal rendezvous with his twin-brother, Ty, that we begin to piece together the threads of the story and realise that everyone is being economical with the truth.
As a near two-hour narrative, it has the ingenuity of a spider's web: I certainly wanted to know why Ed, having raised the money from his twin, had gone on to rob the store before killing himself. But Shinn plays so many games with the spectator that one is never quite sure what point he is making. He may be arguing that mankind - Americans most of all - cannot bear very much reality. Or he may be suggesting that people tell each other stories to disguise their fear of communication. Or he could be writing about the crushing conformity of small-town America where the exceptional few are, quite literally, marginalised. The play suggests so many possible ideas that it becomes like a mystery tour that never reaches its destination.
But I was impressed by Mark Brickman's bare-stage production which mostly allows the words to do the work, except for a night-time ocean dip cleverly evoked through swirling bodies and miniaturised torches. Andrew Scott, who plays both Ed and Ty, also distinguishes between them with deft economy: the druggy Ed wildly semaphores while the shy, computer-buff Ty restricts his gestures to picking imaginary fluff off his trousers. And as Dora, mysteriously drawn to both brothers, Doraly Rosen sexily mixes swagger and sadness.
I have seen slimmer Shinns than this over-written piece but I have the feeling there is a rich seam of talent still waiting to be mined.
• Until April 28. Box office: 020-7478 0100.
