Casualties of war

It's not often that you leave a theatre and want to walk straight back in and watch the play again but that's the effect of Christopher Shinn's Dying City.

At a mere hour and a half, it engages your mind and sympathies so completely that it's alarmingly difficult to stop mulling it over.

Kelly (Sian Brooke), whose husband Craig died a year ago in Iraq, is blanking out in front of the TV in her New York apartment when Craig's twin brother Peter unexpectedly drops by.

It's a queasily awkward reunion and, in a series of flashbacks that bring Craig back to life, we gradually discover why.

This play has a remarkable reach. It pokes its nose into family dynamics and the puzzles we're left with when people disappear from our lives, even as it probes the consequences of a faraway war for those back home.

Shinn is skilled at the betraying pause, and the gaps between words are packed with meanings, unspoken questions and distress.

The characters are never mere mouthpieces for America's state of denial over the war in Iraq: they're alive with shortcomings in James Macdonald's staging.

Kelly may be a therapist, but her command of herself gives way to listlessness and barely suppressed grief when she's alone.

As she stares at Law & Order on the box, we see the emotions flickering behind her gaze.

Playing both twins, Andrew Scott makes them eerily alike and different at the same time. The actor's two astonishing performances push this production into the realm of the truly special.

Scott unerringly pins the psychological connections between the brothers, one a flaky, gay actor, the other a Faulkner-loving soldier, and he's backed up all the way by Macdonald's acute direction, which makes every door-slam count. Your thoughts about Shinn's creations just keep piling up.