The 'Ding Dong' of Caryl Churchill's 20-minute new new play (which is running alongside her old new play, 'Love and Information') isn't a person and it isn't wicked. It's a blameless doorbell, which begs entry to the two near-identical suburban living rooms that form the setting for the play's mirrorlike halves.
Or if Ding Dong is wicked, it's because it reminds us that there really is an outside world beyond these domestic scenes, which take place in households whose sons are fighting on apparently opposing sides in an ill-defined conflict that their families watch on telly as if it were a competitive sport.
The play's sentiments, about the repetitive nature and detached banality of modern violence, aren't radical. But as ever, Churchill's mastery of language is key: in the second half she reassigns and reassembles the dialogue from the first, both sardonically stressing similarities between the sides and creating a bona fide new set of characters in a quietly audacious linguistic experiment.
'Ding Dong' borders on the harrowing, especially at the climax to each scene, where the family gathers round the box to loudly enjoy an execution. But it also has a streak of black humour a mile wide, most notable at the start of the first scene, in which a slobbish figure in an easy chair answers the door by unquestioningly shooting the bell-ringer and laboriously stuffing him into a plastic sack. And there is vivid, unshowy work from director Dominic Cooke's excellent cast of six who take two characters apiece.
It's short, yes, but so was some of Pinter's best work – and this has all the unsettling force and chilly perfection of his 'One for the Road'. It's hard to imagine there's anything better to do with 20 minutes of your time this week.