The Lover/The Collection - TNT

First aired on TV in the early '60s, this double bill of Pinter shorts keeps firmly in the period, with the teasing emergence of uneasy sexual liberation permeating both of them. In the first, a suburban housewife reinvents herself as a bedroom vamp to play out sexual fantasies with her afternoon lover who is, in fact, her straight-laced husband similarly, but less comfortably, transformed. In the second, an older gay man (excellent Timothy West) takes charge of a messy, possibly adulterous, situation when his much younger companion is accused of spending the night with another man's wife. There's more than a hint of events moving out of control, and Jamie Lloyd's carefully pitched production captures the menace, the comedy and the homoerotic overtones of Pinter's work.
Comedy Theatre, 6 Panton St, SW1 (0870-060 6637). Until May 3. £20-£45