Pornography **** TNT

Friday 21 August 2009 14:50 GMT

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This article was first published on tntonline.co.uk on Friday 21 August 2009 14:35 GMT. It was last updated on Friday 21 August 2009 14:50 GMT.

As a suicide bomber prepares to blow up tubes and buses in central London and news of the winning Olympic bid filters through the capital, playwright Simon Stephens imagines in parallel fragments the lives of a random selection of other Londoners from teenager to elderly widow.

Eight characters - sometimes solo, sometimes interacting in pairs - paint a varied picture of cosmopolitan life and occasionally, for the briefest moment, their stories overlap. But for the most part they’re wrapped up in their own day to day concerns – sometimes mundane, sometimes more startling.

Sheila Reid’s sprightly defiant academic reveals an unexpected taste for porn; a young man (a full frontal Sam Spruell) and his sister (Kirsty Bushell) embark on a brief, incestuous affair; an office worker (Frances Ashman) rebels; a graduate visits the lecturer (Sam Graham) she once had a crush on, and, dressed in his school uniform, the fantasies of a schoolboy (Billy Seymour) grow increasingly unsettling.

Meanwhile Anthony Welsh’s bomber packs his bag and travels ever closer to his target.

A programme note states that the play can be performed in any order and by any number of actors, and although the strands occasionally defy linear logic, director Sean Holmes seems to have got it just right, creating a kaleidoscope of loneliness and alienation on a bleak underground set of trailing overhead wires and flickering lights.

Tricycle, Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR (020 7328 1000) to 29th August (£10 - £20.00)