Review: Three in a Bed by Ewa Banaszkiewicz and Mateusz Dymek

Raunchy! Turning-22 Gemma, an editorial dogsbody, inserts herself into the lives of literary liggers Sarah and Tom. Is she the daughter they couldn't have, or the new lover they need to reboot their relationship?

Warped, touching and realistically unresolved, Three in a Bed is a mature and sophisticated piece that tackles some of those "...ever after" issues that most stories steer clear of. For Sarah, there's the challenge of living every day in the light of her childlessness, while Gemma has been rejected by her own mother with casual but sustained cruelty. Life, as we know, goes on, even after the worst personal tragedies - and this, the writers suggest, is how it goes on: messily.

The neediness of Gemma, Sarah and Tom is overt, while their secrets need extraction. This is true to life, in that people's more extreme behaviour often seems to be desperately signalling some kind of pain that those around them can't intuit. Despair and addiction (if only to some form of distraction) are never very far away from these characters who have lost their anchors, and their maps.

This play asks if we can substitute for the broken relationships we can't mend. The writers have no neat answer to this question: the message is that our search for completion will dictate our actions, and that understanding the forces that drive us towards each other may help us heal, if only a little, and a little at a time.

Bold, contemporary writing, together with a great cast propelled by Annabelle Dowler's Gemma, and careful sound design, combine to create a very real world where tragedies must be borne despite the brittle, trivial style of our everyday interactions.

Sarah ...... Anastasia Hille

Tom ...... Matthew Marsh

Gemma ...... Annabelle Dowler

Kira/Tasha ...... Lizzy Watts

Sebastian Murray ...... Philip Fox

Caterer ...... Benjamin Askew

Directed by Sally Avens and broadcast on Monday 10 August 2009 at 14:15 on BBC Radio 4.