Sex with a Stranger

Jaime Winstone and Russell Tovey get down to some fantastically awkward fumbling in Stefan Golaszewski's depressingly accurate new play about a one-night stand: a short sharp blast of realism which is as sour as morning-after breath.

The talented Mr Tovey (as seen in 'Sherlock'; 'Being Human' and Golaszewski's BBC3 sitcom 'Him and Her') is central character Adam, a dull but not particularly nice bloke. Thanks to the choppy non-linear time structure, we see him shuttle between his nicer but duller girlfriend, Ruth (Naomi Sheldon) and the raucous, tottering girl he picks up at a club, Grace (Winstone).

As Sheldon's Ruth stands patiently ironing the new shirt that we've already seen Adam take off for Grace, the tribute to John Osborne's 'Look Back in Anger' is clear. But while Osborne's malcontent protagonist was furiously articulate, Golaszewski's is empty, not angry.

The scenes in this 90-minuter are ultra-brief, but they are little windows into emotional wastelands; their unbearably flat horizons occasionally interrupted by halting conversation, trivial rows or loveless coitus - this last played with relish by Tovey, who kneads Grace's buttocks with the robotic fervour of a milking machine.

Winstone is vivid and earthy as the cackling vegetarian Grace. As in Pinter's 'Betrayal', there is a fourth partner whom we never see - a shame, as this might have been more balanced as a quartet instead of a threesome.

Sheldon is excellent, making Ruth a bright-eyed passive-aggressive squirrel of a mate instead of the pallid victim she could have been. When she gives vent to her feelings in the queue at a Tesco Metro, where another shopper has taken more than ten items through the fast checkout, it's a funny and awful snapshot of a life whose routines have lost their meaning and whose frustrations can no longer be shared.

Tovey also excels as inarticulate Adam, a gym-buffed bore who is bored of his less-buff girlfriend. There are comic moments but this is an admirably sordid and unsexy dramatisation of adultery. Take your erring partner: it will put them off for life.