Metro  
Claire Allfree
16 August 2004

Serbia, 1995, and Aleks and Nikolina, their country in flames, see Aleks's fiancée shot dead. Four years later, both are in Sheffield - Nikolina working in a café and Alex drinking away the days in their squalid flat.

At the café, student Francis is falling in love with Nikolina, while also sleeping with Ruth, the adored girlfriend of his best mate Dale. Ruth, in turn, is assisting a lawyer defending a rapist and becoming increasingly dependent on Francis.

If that sounds like a lot of plot, then it's certainly true that playwright Van Badham has packed plenty into this small but deftly executed play (pictured). It mostly works, not least because it means she can examine the immigrant experience through the context of student life.

The defining theme here is sexual identity, from the horror of rape to the more everyday battle site between the sexes.

Some of the acting feels a little raw, but the many switches between location and time frames are imaginatively handled.