Double Feature (1)

To the National Theatre on Tuesday, to watch two short plays by young writers on very different themes. They are performed in the Paintframe, the space where the National's sets are usually made, and the setting is suitably industrial, with scaffolding and paint cans and the various paraphernalia required for lifting and holding large and heavy objects. The audience sit on padded benches, and Terence and I are lucky enough to be at the back so we can lean against the wall.

First up is Edgar and Annabel by Sam Holcroft. The set is small, an anonymous kitchen in a large box, suitable for a young married couple. Annabel is preparing dinner; Edgar comes home. Their conversation is confused, stilted. Edgar pulls from his bag a couple of scripts and hands one to Annabel. They read their parts in turn, more coherently, but still awkward and odd (why do they talk about salmon when Annabel has prepared chicken?)  Things become clearer in the next scene when Annabel and Edgar step out of the box to meet the authoritative Miller. A and E are roles being played by a couple whose real names are Nick and Marianne. There is talk of surveillance and elections and resistance. The pretence of normality is maintained by the scripts that Miller produces daily. But how good is Nick at playing "Edgar"? How can they deal with the obvious lack of chemistry in a couple that is supposed to be happily married? And what happens next?

Edgar and Annabel is a clever idea, well played by its cast of seven (all competent performers, most noticeably Kirsty Bushell as Marianne). There is comedy and suspense, with a memorable scene involving karaoke and bomb-construction. But the conceit is dragged out for a good fifteen minutes longer than it deserves for a situation and characters that entertain but do not emotionally involve us.

In contrast, the second play of the evening, The Swan, is an intense emotional drama played out in an empty pub. The set, by Soutra Gilmour, who also gave us Edgar and Annabel's kitchen, is so realistic that we wondered why the National Theatre did not provide a similar selection of drinks in its own bars. First to appear are Jim, a loud and bluff South Londoner in his 50s, and Russell, similar age, a middle-class refugee from an unhappy marriage. A funeral is underway in a nearby church and the wake is to be held here. Whose funeral and the emotional turbulence that accompanied his life and death form the subject of the play, and the situation develops as various other characters come in and leave.

There are good performances all round, most notably from Trevor Cooper as Jim, although he is occasionally limited by a script that does not develop the vulnerability underlying his relationship with the dead man; from Pippa Bennett-Warner as the loud Denise and Nitin Kundra as dopey Bradwell. There's comedy and suspense and vulnerability, which come together in an absorbing character study and a satisfying story arc  which ends in an emotionally and intellectually satisfying close.

So I came out of the theatre muttering the comment "excellent", to find that Terence, who had also enjoyed the performance, was wondering whether the play was in any way different from East Enders. Which led us to wonder if that soap opera - which neither of us watch - was high art, or whether the play we had just seen and the characters who inhabit it were no more than - well-acted and generally well-written - clichés. But whether or not they were clichés does not distract from the fact that the piece was acted well and directed well (by Polly Findlay) and the writer, D C Moore, has the potential to create even more absorbing work in future.