UNTOUCHABLE. To 21 December.

London

UNTOUCHABLE
by Simon Burt

Bush Theatre To 21 December 2002
Mon-Sat 8pm
Runs 1hr 30min No interval

TICKETS 020 7610 4224
Review Timothy Ramsden 11 December

A clearly-characterised slice of West Yorkshire youth life.They're off from home, inseparable and untouchable, setting up at the heart of things: 17-year old Louise and Manisha, in their flat over a shop in Wakefield town centre. This is life. And this is Simon Burt's first play, showing he has a good ear for dialogue, a lively sense of character, and perhaps, as yet, less sense of plot development.

He's a male writer who creates convincing females, and he can handle a relationship between friends from different ethnic backgrounds, etching in how families influence people without making an issue of it. Bosom buddies or deadly enemies for the moment, even discovering a surprise tingle of pleasure from accidental contact while sharing the single bed (it's not about that issue either), Louise and Manni are given vivid existence in the script and a pair of fine, contrasting performances.

Louise is the leader, full of confidence yet sensible enough to accept when the experiment in living has burned out. These Yorkshire girls may have 'done Wakey' together, but Louise is the one who keeps to her pub shifts and knows there's no future in trying to shake it in the big city up the road: she knows where that Leeds.

It's studious Manni, starting so concerned for the safety of her A-level textbooks, who goes off the rails: drinking herself to the edge of sickness, blacking out on the day of her university visit, getting sacked from the pub, facing up to her Asian boyfriend's sexual reticence and expectation of her as a future wife.

Natasha Betteridge's production zings along, yet allows quieter moments time to breathe. As often with such slice of life plays, later scenes tend to be darker but neither writer nor director sentimentalises or exaggerates conflict or disappointment. Samantha Robinson makes Louise's confident and composed sides cohere – she may get a rip in her casual gear, but she keeps the working outfit neat - while Pooja Shah's Manni is a finely built portrait of an intelligent mind trying to come to terms with an unfamiliar lifestyle.

Louise: Samantha Robinson
Manni: Pooja Shah

Director: Natasha Betteridge
Designer: Martin Reynolds
Lighting: Tanya Burns
Sound: Scott George for Aura Sound

2002-12-16 14:42:02