What happens after the headrush of new romance subsides, the butterflies settle, and routine and domesticity set in? This two-hander, devised by Alexander Kelly, Chris Thorpe and Rachael Walton of the creative collective Third Angel and performed by Thorpe and Lucy Ellinson, playfully examines long-term love, its comforts and nagging anxieties, its frustrations and rewards.

In an empty black space, shapes are marked out on the floor in white tape. It’s as though Beth and Tom’s relationship has been killed off, the scene of the crime — their home together — marked up with forensic precision to show the outline of everything they once had. Gradually, though, as they trace and retrace conversations, arguments and memories, the performers fill the stage with the accumulated furniture of their shared lives.

With a focused, sometimes ferocious energy, they drag on a dining table, a sofa, a bookcase; in between, the actors’ bickering — he upbraids her for a missed cue, she points out a misplaced prop — mirrors the petty, banal disagreements of established co-habitation.

The piece points up some unpalatable aspects of coupledom: that it’s sometimes financial concerns, the fear of loneliness and social isolation and the desire for children that keep people together. While Beth frets: “I do love him. It’s just that sometimes I wonder if someone else would do the job better,” Tom feels tormented by liberal guilt that, with such suffering in the world, he should be so consumed by the trivial analysis of his personal life. In maintaining their union, have they sacrificed their individual identities? Is all the paraphernalia with which they surround themselves a distraction from a void where their love’s heart should be?

Some of these musings are sufficiently sharply observed to be disquietingly familiar to anyone who has ever had a serious adult relationship; but that very familiarity means that they lacks freshness. At worst, the tone becomes glib. Other passages, such as Beth’s description of love as an invisible household goddess who is “another colour on the palette, another spice in the stew”, are toe-curlingly self-conscious.

Still, the high-energy theatricality is enlivening and Thorpe and Ellinson are engaging company. A pity they can’t tell us anything that we don’t already know.

Box office: 020-7407 0234, to Dec 6 2008

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