Imagine watching a game of scissors-paper-stone, only with the inanimate objects played by people, and you're most of the way there.

Only in this play, paper tends also to damage scissors, and scissors often cuts chunks off stone, and stone sometimes scratches and tears paper.

Here we have one straight man, one straight woman, and a predatory lesbian, in a small modernist room, forever, and it's written by Jean-Paul Sartre. Yet what sounds like an unbroken 85 minutes of pretentious theatrical torment is in fact a tremendously watchable and engaging piece.

This is in large part due to director Hugh Sorrill and his pacy, snappy, incisive translation. Relationships are tangled and emotions twisted, yet this production retains a pristine clarity.

He is aided by a pretty much flawless cast of three main players.

Although two characters verge on the archetypical - there's a dowdy, man-hating homosexual and a pretty posh girl (played by Rachels McArthur and Cooper respectively) - both traverse the full extent of the emotions available to them. Peter Holman's Garcin is altogether more enigmatic, but balances reflectiveness and menace adroitly.

The Loft's studio has presented some of the best imaginable amateur theatre in the past few years. This ensures its record remains impeccable. Peter Ormerod

Verdict: Sharp, focused and stimulating.