Review: Crash****

Some people are going to hate watching this play – seeing how bankers spent bonuses, how champagne is drunk like water and how 100,000 is considered pocket change.

But it's hard to imagine a better vehicle for an actor to really showcase themselves with a variety of genuine soapbox moments.

William Nicholson's attack on the bankers and the system they abused to send us all to the poorhouse couldn't be more timely.

It being so of its moment means the play may have a limited shelf life, but in striking while the iron is hot, Nicholson has created a violently angry play that, nevertheless, is resolutely not one-sided.

Nick is a banker and it is his world that audiences will be compelled to view and be repulsed by equally. His Damien Hirst Spot painting besmirches the walls of his Elizabethan mansion (money can't buy class is one of the many accusations Nicholson throws at the banker). His latest work of art is to be installed by Humphrey, an old university friend.

While Humphrey got the girl, Christine, who both were in love with at uni, Nick got everything else.

Nick has invited his old friends to stay for the weekend after delivering and installing the work of art, and resentments old and new soon make themselves felt.

The muscular language is reminiscent of Mamet. That Nicholson invents a group of violent "ramblers" to introduce dramatic tension reveal a weakness in the play – where grandstanding speeches are at the heart of the script, some sense of tension is sacrificed.

To November 13.