A TENDER PRAYER

NEW VIC, BRISTOL

There are some things in life which defy explanation. Like how the sight of a man in an Elvis suit singing "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" in a Russian accent could reduce a world-weary critic to tears. For the first time in my life, I cried all the way home from the theatre - and I cannot tell you why. On the surface A Tender Prayer appears to be nothing more than a nicely crafted little play, but beneath the surface there is strange emotional alchemy going on.

Jen (Lucy Black) and Travis (Alex Avery) have travelled the world, from Goa to Gothenburg. Now they are on a Russian train which may be going to Novosibirsk or may - like their relationship - be going nowhere at all. As their love affair comes to an end, they are making one last train ride to divide up their communal assets. Not, like most couples, the CD collection and the anglepoise lamp, but the landmarks from their travels: the bars of Prague, the Santander ferry crossing, and Denmark. The death throes of their relationship are interrupted by a progression of alternately morose and comical fellow-passengers (all played by Joe Hall), who drench the travellers in vodka and Russian melancholy.

A Tender Prayer is a play about loss, and about letting go. Yet its depiction of loss is insidiously implicit rather than tritely explicit. By only sketchily hinting at the bleeding and unresolved wounds in Jen and Travis's personal histories, Lucy Catherine strikes a far deeper chord than if she had allowed the play to become a graphic depiction of her characters' suffering. The audience cannot be simple voyeurs of other people's misery; it is too intangible for that. Instead, the are gradually brought to hear the chord which it strikes within anyone who has suffered loss and has carried on regardless.

Catherine captures precisely the language of the everyday, but is skilled enough to utilise it in weaving an emotional edifice far greater than a surface reading of the script would suggest. Like the train journey it depicts, A Tender Prayer reaches its ultimate destination with a lulling, at times almost soporific, rhythm, a cascade of words clickety-clacking from the actors' lips. And yet in the final five minutes, as the characters achieve some form of closure, the impact is stunningly disproportionate.

Catherine's low-key script is complemented by a nicely understated production. Gareth Machin's direction and Mike Bearwish's set also work on the level of suggestion rather than blunt representation, capturing both the claustrophobic intensity of a long-distance railway carriage and the sweeping emptiness of the steppes. Black and Avery are both skilled enough not to overplay the underlying emotional threads, and Hall provides well-timed comedy under which glistens a razor edge of vague threat and bleak melancholia.

A Tender Prayer could serve as an object lesson to many of those writing new plays for television and stage. It shows that true emotional resonance is not achieved through cheap pyrotechnics, but through subtle and intelligent writing which works on an array of different levels. It is a true example of theatrical thaumaturgy. Go and see it. It may make you weep too.

TOBY O'CONNOR MORSE

Until 10 June. Box office: 0117 987 7877