fringe round-up; How to Get Screwed

If there's an award going for gratuitous titling, then Spotlites TC should bag it. True, How to Get Screwed boasts a fair number of scantily clad youths and a simulated sexual assault, but this rough-and-ready feast of physical theatre is quite capable of looking after itself without the misleading suggestion that it is another fringe sex aid. The storyline follows a downward curve towards the incarceration of Chris, a schizophrenic who becomes locked into a cycle of anti-social behaviour, turning against family, friends and anyone else in the vicinity. The role is switched between the eight-strong cast, accentuating the character's fragmented sense of self and stressing - without being crudely polemical - a wider pattern of social dysfunction.

The publicity claims that numerous injuries were sustained during rehearsal and watching the young company thunder round the stage, adopting choreographed restraining holds or launching into genuinely unruly scraps, you can believe it. Although the dialogue is clumsily over-fond of swear words, and the family relations are poorly sketched, this is a highly watchable account, not just of mental illness but also of the frictions and unhappinesses of teenage life.

n Marco's (venue 98). To 25 August