The Deposit

This was another cracking little play in Hampstead's studio theatre played by four unknown (to me) young actors and with minimal stage props.

Two couples have decided to move in together to a one-bedroom flat for a year, sharing the rent and the cramped accommodation, with a view to being able to save for a deposit in London's ridiculously overheated housing market. The two girls are best friends from university. Predictably the friendly relations soon begin to break down. What was so neat about the writing is the balance of all the characters. No one is exactly in the right or the wrong. Unlike say, the preposterously popular Poldark where the baddies are such pantomime villains that one almost feels the need to hiss when they come on the screen, none of these four young people seem so unreasonable. They just have different viewpoints, and perhaps a bit less tact than would be useful.

Without wishing to give away too much of the ending, it all breaks down in horrible recriminations. The achievement in the writing is how skilfully one is brought from general amity to bitterness and jealously in slow drips.