Burn/Chatroom/ Citizenship, NT Cottesloe, London
Some adolescent traumas
Walsh's Chatroom is a disturbing study of virtual bullying in which a suicidal boy - played with tender gawkiness by Andrew Garfield - tries to find some buddies on the web only to be egged on by two malign coevals - Matti Houghton's cool, mocking Eva and Matt Smith's William, a chillingly clever sadistic geek. The denouement is nonsensically weak, but this is still is an alarming modern variation on epistolic drama and a psychological battle with the internet equivalent of good and bad angels. Poetically impressionistic as well as having with an ear for tart and semi-articulate street talk, Gearing's Burn is a suspenseful tragedy about a backward boy who's potentially dangerous but also tenderly protective towards Andrea Riseborough's maltreated, dowdy Linda. Finally Ravenhill's comedy, Citizenship, centres round Sid Mitchell's confused, laddy-going-on-gay Tom. This only skims the surface really, but Richard Dempsey is extremely funny as his fraught teacher, with Matt Smith now a ludicrously laidback dopehead.
To 3 June, 020 7452 3000
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