Wastwater

Simon Stephens has named his new play after Wastwater, the deepest lake in England. In three stand-alone scenes, Katie Mitchell's superb actors show you countless dark shadows flitting across the surfaces of six linked lives.

Bleakness becomes blackness as a boy leaves his foster mother, a policewoman shocks her would-be lover to the core and a terrified man buys a child from the Philippines. Each realtime scene is cruelly heightened: like a picture shot on a slow exposure, leaves are weirdly green, stains
are unnaturally murky and little tics become epically blurred and grotesque. The scenes bleed into your mind. If only there were a David Attenborough-style guide to shed light on the strange emotions that breed in their depths.

As with so many unsatisfying new plays at the Royal Court, this is worth seeing just for the acting. Linda Bassett and Tom Sturridge bring intense, particular textures to Frieda and her foster son, dependent on each other but separated by past sadness.

Jo McInnes pants her way into weird, self-loathing character as the child protection officer whose first
porno role was screwing a girl who pretended to be her daughter. And as Sian, the human trafficker who was once Frieda's unhappiest temporary child, Amanda Hale plays a girl who loves to be bad to perfection. But the more hardcore the characters get, the harder it is to believe them or to see the poisoned roots of their despair.

Displaced children and defrocked carers feature in every scene. And the green veranda in a village which will soon be a runway, the cheesy hotel and the dismal lock-up are all on the outskirts of Heathrow. But these pieces (creepy, ambiguous, undeveloped) reflect each other without affecting each other. Like the planes that leave disquiet in their throbbing wake, they glimpse lives in transit, unrestrained by the roots of love and habit that hold others to the ground.