On the wings of despair

We can tell from the off that dirty butterfly is a play of serious import by the fact that the title stands in resolutely lower-case letters, as though it has far more important things with which to concern itself than the niceties of English grammar.

Its writer, Debbie Tucker Green (or perhaps that should be debbie tucker green) is very much the playwright du moment, as she follows this run at Soho with another new play at Hampstead next month. Let us just hope that that piece, born bad, has something that vaguely resembles a narrative arc.

For while no one could question the intensity of the writing or the feeling with which the hardworking trio of actors imbue it, it is difficult to see where 70 minutes in the company of this grubby lepidopteran actually gets anyone. Amelia (Sharon Duncan-Brewster), Jason (Mark Theodore) and Jo (excellent Jo McInnes) are neighbours in a distinctly un-soundproofed block of flats, and on a daily basis the first two hear the last being subjected to non-stop abuse from her husband.

Amelia shouts, Jo suffers; Jo bleeds a little more, Amelia raises her voice yet again. Jason may or may not be aroused by all this. And so it continues, literally ad nauseam.

Katrina Lindsay's awkward set sees the actors perched initially on a sheer roof, where their intercutting dialogue takes on a hyper-real quality, as if they were communicating telepathically with each other. It all returns to the horizontal for the second scene, set in the café where Amelia works as a cleaner, but Jason oddly doesn't survive the play's transition to ground level, thus narrowing the focus further.

There's not much that director Rufus Norris, formerly winner of an Evening Standard Theatre Award for Outstanding Newcomer, can do with all this. Rather like Amelia and Jo, he has to get his head down and hope for the best, while very much fearing the worst.

Until March 22. Box office: 020 7478 0100.

Dirty Butterfly