Concrete Playground

This one man show might be about a bee sting, a childhood, a relationship with a woman - oh no, that's right, it's about nothing. But it does tell you that up front in the title, so you should be prepared for it.

Not so much stream-of-consciousness as random puddles of it, Brooklyn playwriter Will Eno's script is erratic but deadpan, placing the audience in a state of awkward self-awareness and uncertainty for its whole 63 minutes.

The rambling monologue is delivered with uneasy severity by Luke Mullins who displays a knack for comic timing that he hasn't been able to exploit in his other recent productions (The War of the Roses, The Duel).

The attempts at clever self-reflexivity fall on the shallow side, but this is an intriguing hour of theatre from director Sam Strong, providing an uncomfortable window onto one man's bittered psyche. As Mr Pain says at one point "it might be beautiful, if you like that sort of thing."