A Prayer For My Daughter - TNT

American Thomas Babe's intense late '70s drama brings two suspects face to face with the cops for a long night of soul-searching and interrogation on the Fourth of July. It's late, and he's tired, but Sergeant Kelly wants a confession before he goes home - even though his manic depressive daughter has just called him threatening to commit suicide.High stairways leading down to the police squad room place them all in a kind of New York hell - all four have, one way or the other, sunk pretty low and Babe draws little distinction between the felons and the law enforcers, symbolic, no doubt, of his view of the declining state of his country. The structure is sometimes awkward, and he stretches credulity a bit too far, but the performances carry the evening. Matthew Marsh's belligerent Kelly drinks on the job and is free with his fists; his much-married sidekick Jack (Corey Johnson) keeps his heroin kit neatly stashed in his desk drawer. And Sean Chapman's gay middle-aged Sean (a former Vietnam orderly turned criminal) maintains a remarkable sangfroid as he and his young junkie companion (a twitching, Colin Morgan) are accused of callously blowing the head off an innocent elderly lady.
Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 (020-7922 2922). Until March 15. £22.50-£10