Stripped bare of inspiration

You offer vulnerable hostages to critics' mockery when you bill a season of first plays under the banner of "Naked Talent". And Untouchable by Simon Burt, which is presented under this boastful title, proves to be a piece where the writer's gifts are kept under drapes rather than confidently displayed. It's an aimless, 80-minute playlet, a mildly amusing comedy about two 17-year-old best girl-friends: dominating, possessive Lou and unsophisticated Manni, who's of Asian origin. They try living together in a bedsitting room in Wakefield's clubland and fall out. But the reasons for the collapse of their close friendship remain a matter of mystery.

In eight repetitive scenes the girls spend their time doing next to nothing, while they brood about boys and sex, go clubbing and drink and drink. At least Manni, who's, unbelievably,

Untouchable

working at college with the aim of going to university, appears in varied stages of inebriation, from the drunken to the horribly hungover by way of much puking. The alcoholically-challenged are the most boring of stage characters - except in rare, major plays like The Iceman Cometh and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Manni's no exception. We are witnesses to her dwindling enthusiasm for university, her obsessive drinking and her comments on her sex-free relationship with a long-term boyfriend. Yet we are offered no insight into what drives or goads her.

Released from parental control the girls are excited by the prospect of living free and easy together. But with only one bed, in which they sleep at opposite ends, there's not much room for sexual manoeuvre, though a tiny flicker of lesbian desire ruffles the duvet. The end, in Natasha Betteridge's jauntily realistic production, which lacks a realistic stage set, comes out of the blue. The girls' Yorkshire accents are sometimes too thick for intelligibility. At least Lou, whose tough sparkiness and exuberance gives way to doleful boredom, and the discontented, introverted Manni are respectively acted by Samantha Robinson and Poojah Shah with impressive naturalness and conviction. Naked Talent? No way.

Until 21 December. Box office: 020 7610 4224.

Untouchable: Naked Talent Festival