Nursing the suspense

Alfred Hitchcock would have enjoyed playing with the layers of suspense and psychological gamesmanship in Mystery of the Rose Bouquet, which was first revealed to the British public at the Donmar Warehouse in 1987.

In this enticing two-hander, the characters constitute a woman patient with an egostabbing wit, and a deceptive doormat of a nurse, who develop a friendship fuelled by truth, lies and unwitting revelations, bringing a surreal perspective on grief and disillusionment.

The Argentinian writer Manuel Puig is most famous for his novel Kiss of the Spiderwoman, which notoriously places two persecution victims - one homosexual, one a political revolutionary - in the same cell, where they bond through retelling movie stories. A similar structure and mood underpin his Rose Bouquet, which in David Graham-Young's enjoyably piquant production exhibits the catty humour, the skilfully elusive characterisation and the shiverdownthe-spine uncertainty that reveal this as a minor gem.

Valerie Sarruf 's Patient is an initially icy manipulatrix, who enjoys spitting out such jibes as, "If people have the bad taste to want to live, let 'em." She is officially in hospital after collapsing with depression because of the death of her beloved grandson in a car accident, yet her grief has developed into a pessimistic control-freakery which is confounded as Susan Franklyn's Nurse reveals that her own tragedies demand equal attention.

David Burrows's set welcomes the audience into a characterless yet affluent room, which is dominated by a single bed. Franklyn sometimes overdoes her character's timidity so that the script's energy can dip, but Sarruf 's wilful Patient could send chief executives screaming for mercy.

However, it is Puig's writing that emerges as the true star of an evening that beguiles and teases in equal measure. It lightly demonstrates how fantasy can be a serious business for those whose emotional suffering makes rationality an irrelevance.

Showing at the Old Red Lion, EC1, until 2 November. Box office: 020 7837 7816.