Danny and the Deep Blue Sea

The bar is straight out of a Bruce Springsteen song: a public place where people come to be alone. The only two customers are from a Bronx blue collar fairy tale – Roberta, a single mother who reeks of a life over by 30; and Danny, a man so consumed and crippled by rage he is called 'The Beast'.

They meet over pretzels and tepid beer and spend the rest of the night and morning trying to find love, meaning, forgiveness, and hope in the debris of each other's lives.

It sounds sweet, but this is romance, Bronx-style.

When Danny and Roberta come close to one another, they react and repel, like charged ions. Bruised and battered by the world, they bruise and batter each other.

When each shows the other a way out of their small worlds, a vertigo consumes them. For Roberta it is forgiveness for a terrible act she committed; for Danny it is the ability to walk down the street without attacking someone.

Writer John Patrick Shanley won an Oscar in 1987 for his script Moonstruck. He certainly has an ear for the profanity-laced conversational rhythms of the Bronx. There is something of another Oscar winner, The Graduate, in the show's rather improbable ending.

The cast is also slightly imbalanced, with the brilliant Alessija Lause doing most of the heavy lifting as Roberta. Nikolaus Szentmiklosi as Danny is slightly one-note, only really convincing in his fits of rage.

It makes for a slightly ragged, but enjoyably grizzled, tale.