A Profoundly Affectionate Passionate Devotion to Someone (-noun), Royal Court Upstairs

Marriage is a funny thing. You love each other, and hate each other. You fancy each other, you're  repelled by each other. You worship your kids, you resent your kids. You do everything, you do nothing. Through it all somehow, the relationship endures. That's what one holds onto during A Profoundly Affectionate Passionate Devotion to Someone (- noun), Debbie Tucker Green's exhilarating and coruscating examination of marriage in which three couples say things to each other that they'll wish they'd never said, or wish they'd never heard. It's scarily good entertainment.

That said, it may unsettle the faint-hearted or those who've just had babies or are having a bit of a dry spell or find hormonal and/or professional distraction an easier solution to trouble at home, than facing it. There were sideways glances and some squirming on the stools on which we were seated as the characters in A Profoundly Affectionate Passionate Devotion to Someone(- noun) sparred across us. We were literally in the crossfire for large parts of 80 whiplash minutes.

What comes through so clearly is the old adage of there being a secret at the heart of every marriage, that only the couple knows. The external may show two people burning alive or, indeed, totally caught up in each other. The reality is in what's said and done as the years pass, as circumstances change, when the curtains are drawn and it's just the two of you managing a contract agreed in easier times. That tension is  reduced to a marital jus in A Profoundly Affectionate Passionate Devotion to Someone (-noun). In doing so, Tucker Green is free to create vibrant exchanges that are super-fast, clear, brutal, surprising, and alive.

In conclusion: A superb cast - Meera Syal, Gary Beadle, Gershwyn Eustache Jnr, Shvorne Marks and Lashana Lynch - keep us on edge to the last. The first exchanges could be shorter and the middle exchange longer, but what the hell?  One imagined a lot of you do thats and is that how you feel and now do you get what I'm talking abouts on the way home. 

Royal Court Upstairs, Sloane Square, London SW1.   Run ends April 1.