Sharing the city syndrome

The city is a brutalising place to live. Or so much of the drama of the past few years would have us believe. Simon Bowen's first play, Free, joins a lengthening list of films and plays - Michael Winterbottom's Wonderland is the most celebrated example - that shows us a random selection of city dwellers, meeting and separating, but seldom communicating. It is a species of drama with an internal paradox, in that it populates its supposedly vast and impersonal metropolis with people who keep bumping into one another by coincidence.

Bowen's debut shows much promise, but isn't entirely convincing as its cast of young urbanites plus one dad renegotiate their relationships to the big smoke. Catherine McCormack's Sophie is a temp: creatively and

emotionally frustrated. Finding herself at the airport after falling asleep on the Tube, she encounters Chris (Dylan Brown) and an invitation to escape to Paradise. Meanwhile, her boyfriend Alex is offered a job by a brutal capitalist who's just sacked Alex's childhood friend. Not far away, Sophie's thrusting ex-boss Kate has a face-off with her estranged father.

In an otherwise naturalistic production by Thea Sharrock (with glowing panelled backdrop by Rachel Blues), Bowen overworks the accidental connections between his dramatis personae. The mercurial Danny (Paul Wyett) seems to have been created solely as a kind of dramatic escort: the spare character to make up a pair on the several occasions when there's no one else available. His ubiquity opens up a credibility gap. There are others, notably when McCormack's lovably pissed-off Sophie falls for the moronic globetrotter Chris.

If several of the relationships and characters seem off the peg, and more than one of their duologues ring hollow, there remain exciting indications of the writer Bowen might

become. He is sensitive to the spiritually debilitating effects of material and corporate culture, for which the city makes a conveniently abstract scapegoat. "I'm rich and that makes me happy," screams Nicola Walker's Kate, a woman who blithely refers to her employees as "resources". Yet geographical escape isn't necessarily the answer. The play builds to a poignant conclusion as Sophie and Alex, separated by half the globe, each beg the other for help.

There are nuggets of choice dialogue too, which an excellent cast delivers with panache. Andrew Lincoln and Stephen Beresford have great fun as the drunken yuppies Alex and Nick, before their friendship flares up in melodramatic violence. As David, Ian Redford subtly suggests the desolation of not only being widowed but also losing a daughter. And McCormack exudes the type of shiftlessness that's merely aggravated by the trappings of contentment. "You don't look skint," she's told by her new beau. "That's why I'm skint," she replies.

Not the finished article, but promising.

Free