Hello and Goodbye - TNT

Director Paul Robinson first tackled this 1965 two-hander by Athol Fugard in 2003. Presumably haunted by the damaged, white Smit siblings and their inability to escape the past, he has now returned to their uneasy reunionwith a new cast. Set in the grimy, rundown Port Elizabeth home (barely more than a shack) where Johnny and his older sister Hester grew up, it's an emotional account of lives blighted by a combination of extreme poverty and the tyranny of a father who lost his leg in an accident and is, apparently, sleeping, seriously ill and bedbound, in an off-stage room.Whilst Johnny remained behind at his constant beck and call, a rejected Hester made an early escape to Johannesburg and a life of prostitution. Now, fifteen years later, she's returned – not in search of reconciliation but to claim her share of the rumoured compensation money.
Both performers are excellent. Rafe Spall captures the barely controlled anxiety of the troubled Johnny, a solitary, borderline autistic young man immured by his fathers' Calvinist indoctrination. And Saskia Reeves' cynical Hester, rifling frantically through the cardboard boxes containing memories of their repressed childhood, conveys all the disappointment and desperation of a woman who has finally used up all her options.
Trafalgar Studios (2), Whitehall, SW1 (0870-060 6632) Until May 17. Tickets £22.50 (£15 Monday).