Vincent River - TNT

The truth behind the birth and death of thirty-something Vincent is gradually uncovered in this emotionally powerful revival of Philip Ridley's atmospherically-written two-hander. Lynda Bellingham's superficially tough but ultimately vulnerable working-class Anita exchanges information with the uncomfortable teenager who has been trailing her ever since he found her only son lying bleeding and beaten to a violent death in an East End toilet renowned for its homosexual trysts. In return for facts prised from Mark Field's haunted, reluctant Davey she reveals how, when she was younger, she also was the victim of another kind of intolerance. Now her son's fate has exposed her once again to the prejudices of those around her. As the lives of these two scarred human beings briefly overlap, Ridley shows the damaging concealments that oil the wheels of family life, and, in an intense 90 minutes, creates vivid word pictures which conjure the awfulness of what really happened.
Trafalgar Studios (2), Whitehall, SW1 (0870-060 6632). Until November 17. £22.50