Andrew Bovell’s brittle drama of loneliness and betrayal calls to mind that hoary sporting cliché “It’s a game of two halves”. For this is a play that could end at the interval.

In its engrossing first half we see two couples enacting the routines of adultery; their deceptions are synchronised and overlap in a manner at once amusing and creepily erotic. Then in its second, the cast expands to a total of nine characters, and the connections between these nine are revealed. But precise satire gives way to anecdotal rambling, and as the links are explicitly articulated mystery dissolves into a mixture of the prosaic and the improbable.

Bovell’s play, besides suggesting the interweaving of our fates, is a provoking comment on the strangled communication that occurs between men and women. As lovers, we habitually talk at cross purposes — hence the play’s title.

Yet while this is a finely geared piece — Bovell has engineered its structure with scientific skill — its burden of coincidence defies belief. Although the text ultimately combines the implausible with an unhealthy dose of cliché, matters are redeemed by the performances. I would pay good money to watch any of Lucy Cohu, John Simm, Kerry Fox and Ian Hart on the stage. To see them all together might be regarded as a lavish treat, and of the four the nervily protean Hart and luminously engaging Cohu stand out here.

Toby Frow’s production emphasises the cinematic qualities of Bovell’s play. It was adapted for the screen as Lantana, and bears more than a passing resemblance to Patrick Marber’s Closer. Yet as it fidgets towards its quixotically inconclusive ending, its smart pretentiousness calls to mind a David Lynch movie — enigmatic, disorientating and brutal, perhaps, but at the same time strangely tenuous.

Until 12 December. Information: 0871 297 5454.