The Island. Cervantes Theatre.

Spaniard Juan Carlos Rubio is something of a polymath. In addition to working as an actor and TV presenter, he is also an award-winning screenwriter, theatre director, and has at least a dozen plays to his name. London productions of his work have been few and far between which is something of a shame. The writer’s two-hander, The Island, currently at the Cervantes Theatre in a top-notch English language translation by Tim Gutteridge, is great.

It is 4am on a rainswept night in a dreary hospital waiting room. The merciless glare of white strip lights suggest there is no-where here to hide. Police officer Laura (Rebecca Banatvala) and retired teacher Ada (Rebecca Crankshaw) are awaiting news on the fate of their mentally impaired son Samuél. The boy is badly injured after falling 7 floors from a kitchen window, unaccountably left open by one of the duo. “It’s a nightmare we can’t wake up from” says Ada, not just of the boy’s accident but of 11 years living with a mute, aggressive and demanding child. Samuél is “the Island that refuses to die” says Ada and she is not entirely sure she wants him to wake up from his operation.

This might seem an odd time for a couple to re-evaluate the nature of their creaking relationship but, this being enthralling melodrama, that is just exactly what they do. Ada, 15 years older than her partner, feels alone and abandoned after 12 years in an often sexless marriage. Emotionally speaking she is an island unto herself.  “I can’t see you Laura, you’ve left” she wails as she threatens to pop a dozen Valium. “Can you see me?”.

A frazzled Laura, recovering from a traumatic workplace encounter with a psychotic murderer and fielding calls from parents who think of her wife as “a muff-diving ogre”, is equally close to the edge. One of the pair keeps sending illicit texts to someone she claims is a work colleague but is not. Anticipate hidden secrets, uninvited revelations, and a stark confrontation with unwelcome realities. “It all had to happen” Laura says of the morning’s satisfyingly over-the-top events, and you cannot but agree with her.

Rubio’s narrative combines crisply written dialogue with exposition-heavy monologues delivered by each woman directly to the audience. It is a neat way of accentuating the emotional gulf that has grown between the two. The show has an unnecessary prologue and the plot meanders somewhat mid-way, but otherwise this is gripping stuff aided by tight direction from Jessica Lazar.

Banatvala, seen recently in Rafaella Marcus’ phenomenal play Sap (also directed by Lazar) is terrific as the philandering cop. But the real treat here is an utterly magnetic turn by Crankshaw (naked from the waist up for much of the time) as the weepy, broken-hearted Ada whose grief is as much for her own lost life as it is for her son. Wonderful stuff.

Writer: Juan Carlos Rubio (translated by Tim Gutteridge)

Directors: Jessica Lazar