An intriguing fringe production takes improvised jazz as a metaphor for life Chasing the Moment Arcola Theatre, London E8

Improvised jazz, with its smoky mystique and the seeming impossibility of the music, is presented by the writer/actor Jack Shepherd as a perfect analogy for existence in his intriguing play Chasing the Moment.

The world he creates is the downstairs basement of a seedy Hackney bar where a jazz quartet performs once a week. We, too, are scripted in, because the entire auditorium of the Arcola Theatre in north-east London has been transformed by the designer Patrick Du Wors into a jazz club, accessorised with authentically rickety tables, empty beer bottles and a floor scattered with fag ends.

The band consists of two old-style jazzers - Les the pianist (Shepherd) and Harry on double bass (Jim Bywater) - and two new bugs, the drummer Tony (Clifford Samuel) and saxophonist Joe (Tom Silburn). A couple of women come and go from upstairs. Sharon (Gracy Goldman) is the charismatic love interest and Joanne (Helen Anderson) is the proprietor's partner, trying to cope while her other half gradually expires on a life-support machine in hospital. Not that anyone seems too upset about this. The main question of the evening is, at first, about which generation plays the best jazz.

Is it the old junkie Harry, who has the proper hacking cough, a hotline to a drug dealer and a stash of mordant gags? Or will the traditionals be elbowed a side by the flash newbies of the contemporary jazz scene? "They buy a saxophone because it goes with their tie," sniffs Les, referring disparagingly to his younger colleague's kind. Off-stage, none of them really gets along with the others. Yet when the rhythm begins, the band strikes up a syncopated, mutually appreciated musical conversation. Without each other, these men are nothing.

The structure of the night is simple. We see the band arrive and set up. During the interval, the band members perform a set of standards. In the second half, they pack up and go home. Within this structure are contrived various "solo" moments, where each musician steps into the spotlight, allowing us into his movingly authentic inner world. Love, death, God, babies, racism and even a drug overdose make appearances in the course of the evening, the dialogue thoroughly interwoven with the carefree intimacy of live jazz.

The director Mehmet Ergen, who founded Arcola six years ago and who has raised it to its current status as one of the most innovative venues on the London fringe, manages to bring personality and character to a group of men who could have remained a set of ciphers. There's Harry, ghastly and wracked. Joe is professional but sexually louche. Tony was raised by an evangelical, God-fearing dictator of a father, and Les can't see why being white and working-class is a barrier to understanding music invented by black American slaves. Their music is also toe-tappingly authentic, as each of these actors can play his own instrument rather well.

Chasing the Moment was originally devised by Shepherd at the National Theatre Studio. It is not subject to a tight plot, nor even a clear denouement. Indeed, some moments veer rather dangerously towards the precipice of late-night student conversation: musings about life, DNA, the fear of death and so on. But Shepherd, a master at revealing the effort behind ordinary British lives, has managed to keep a sense of scripted and wry comedy, while pulling off the considerable feat of making the entire night seem like an extended piece of improvisation.

According to Harry on the double bass, it's all down to "dodgy wiring". If life, like jazz, is an entertaining but essentially unplotted journey whose only rationale is dodgy wiring, there obviously isn't much point in making a song and dance about it. You might as well just accept the status quo and realise that it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. It's a rather profound piece of philosophy, all told.

For further info and booking details, visit: www.arcolatheatre.com

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