Theatre - A poignant tale of thwarted obsession in the East End. By Michael Portillo Shoreditch Madonna Soho Theatre, London W1

The press officer at the Soho Theatre announced: "Last night would have been our second night, but the performance was cancelled be- cause of the bombs, so tonight is like an early preview." She need not have worried. Rebecca Lenkiewicz's new play Shoreditch Madonna was slickly delivered by an accomplished cast.

If the actors' performance improves with further practice, that will be icing on an already rather good cake.

The acclaim won by her earlier work has left Lenkiewicz with much to live up to. The Night Season opened at the National a year ago and earned her the Critics' Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright. She was feted, too, for her first effort at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2000. That play, Soho: a tale of table dancers, drew on her own experience as a dancer. Fortunately, despite the heightened expectations, her work shows no signs of nerves or writer's block. It is fresh, self-confident and thoughtful.

She sets her play in the underground art world of London's East End. Lenkie-wicz's brother and sister are artists and, she says, their experiences have helped inform her writing. Maybe she needed to talk to them some more. Her characters do not speak convincingly about their art, and it is not quite good enough to plead that they are creative spirits who have lost their way. Still, it doesn't matter. The setting is not crucial.

Shoreditch Madonna presents us with an authentic account of the passions that flare up between six characters. At the core of the play are three young men, all artists, who devote most of their time to curat- ing exhibitions and "happenings" in their shared squat. Their failure to develop their own talent lends sadness to the play, and invests them with a kind of youthful weariness. They are mediocrities.

This creative stagnation makes their love lives seem all the more important. Tristan (Lee Ingleby) is a virgin. Nick (Adam Croasdell) scores frequently, but no girl has ever seriously interested him. Michael (Daniel Rabin) keeps his end up with the girls, so to speak, but nurses an unrequited passion for Nick. When Nick becomes interested in a sad-looking girl who has appeared at the gallery, Michael teases him bawdily, in an echo of Mercutio gently baiting Romeo.

As Nick's interest in Christina (Alexandra Moen) turns to obsession, he loses self-control. Christina is in deep shock after the suicide of her drug-addicted boyfriend, Charlie. Nick sleeps on the floor by her bed, telling himself that he is there to comfort her, but longing to exploit her vulnerability. When she apparently mistakes him for the dead Charlie and invites him into her bed, he surrenders with only a minimal attempt to set the record straight.

Has he raped her? By the end of the play, it seems that maybe the violation is the other way around. Christina is using Nick: exploiting his body, abusing his video image, using him to get to Charlie's father and, insanely, trying to provoke Charlie to a jealous fit that will bring him back from the dead.

Charlie's father is the dissolute artist Devlin (Leigh Lawson). Looking like a tramp and claiming to be both artistically and sexually impotent, he competes for Christina against the good-looking and sexually successful Nick. Naturally, Devlin wins. It is useless for the younger man to protest that "adolescents should have sex with people their own age".

I liked Lawson's low Irish drawl, as soothing as the hum of a bee. Oddly, as Lenkie- wicz's oldest character, he seemed the best drawn of all. Perhaps there is a hint of stereotype about the demons in his mind and the bottle in his hand. But I enjoyed this picaresque seducer and double-crosser. It is clear, as he says himself, that the tragedies of his life have many years ago left him anaesthetised "and some fucker forgot to take out the needle".

Lenkiewicz writes fine dialogue, and every word feels comfortable in the mouths of her actors. Their conversa-tions are crisp, witty and sexy - her text repays reading.

Amid all these unsuccessful entanglements, Tristan's conquest of an older woman, one of Devlin's exes, provides a single episode of sexual happiness. Ingleby gives a fine performance as the nervy, sensitive and considerate wimp. Martha (Francesca Annis) longs for such tenderness, veteran that she is of Devlin's production line of conquests.

Shoreditch Madonna is directed by Sean Mathias, who is also under pressure to repeat an earlier success, on stage and screen, with Bent. He has done well again in a production that contrives to be simultaneously poignant and joyful. Shoreditch Madonna confirms the progress of an imaginative writer and a sensitive director.

Booking on 0870 429 6883 until 6 August

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