I think this play was about possession; that is to say, possessiveness when it prevails over another human being's personality. Are the two women really two aspects of the same character, one lying buried for twenty years and only now escaping from control and condescension? Or are they real individuals who cannot connect any more, except where fuelled by coffee and alcohol?

Either way, what they thought they owned is escaping their grasp in dangerous and uncontrolled ways. The play has an edge of surrealism that is missing from some of Pinter's work, and lays it open to many and various attempts at interpretation.

The scene is set in a living room of a middle-class household - and that is where the whole play is presented. The Burton Taylor theatre is very small, and the staging of this production makes no pretence to be anything other than claustrophobic - compressed, even - just a couple of big sofas and a drinks table framing the scene. We have (at first sight anyway) a couple who have been married a bit too long, plus an invited interloper whose life and world they cannot really connect with; though once all three were closer than they had really understood, or they are able to accept now.

Much is asked of the small cast of three, and they deliver excellently well. The play is all about increasingly fraught interaction between them, requiring that the actors dig deep into emotional reserves as well as energy, and there are few moments of rest.

They have the disadvantage (in the context of this play) of being inescapably young for middle-aged roles, so it's difficult to hear them talking about adventures and misadventures in London from twenty years before! But given the apparently fragile grasp on reality of the characters, maybe this shouldn't have worried me so much, and in every other respect they are just the people they need to be.

A rewarding rendition of a very challenging play.