Wasted (King's Head Theatre, 24 September)

Some British theatre grimness hilarity: I went to this thinking it was Kate Tempest's Wasted (2012), a play about young people wasting their lives in substance abuse that played at Edinburgh. Instead, this Wasted (2015) was by someone named Kat Woods, and involved young people wasting their lives in substance abuse and--in this case--going through the process of barely-consensual sex and a subsequent rape investigation. Plus, according to the program, the lead actor has a first-class degree in philosophy from Edinburgh. Together that's almost certainly a better joke than I could write about some of the new perennials of the post-everything British stage: the grimness of post-working-class life, post-work, delivered by our well-credentialed young men and women.

With that said: I didn't hate this. This was a very, very on-the-nose script, down to the football-injury-that-ended-my-proleterian-hopes-for-life-ah-well sustained by the male lead. But its use of the forensic details of a rape investigation in present-day UK gave real force to the characters' predicament: the play itself refused to assign blame to anyone--or exculpate anyone--but showed the legal process, thoughtfully and thoroughly, leading to some terrifying places. The actors were asked to do to much--too many accents, too many characters, too many scene shifts and mimed props--but did it well. And the tiny-room dynamics of a pub theatre were perfect for this. It felt like being present for the room's collective shame and guilt--there but for the grace of god written in every face. So another cheerful night out at the theatre! But powerful in its way--even if this set of topics seemingly less a well-trodden path than a highway, of late.