Yours For The Asking

One of Spain's leading writers, she completed it in 1973 only two years before the dictator Franco's death.

Yours For The Asking dramatises the insidious effect of mass media advertising and news manipulation on the lives of ordinary people.

These concepts are no longer new, yet the play retains its relevance given the current Murdoch hacking scandals, the rebranding of mass-murdering company Union Carbide as Olympics sponsor Dow Chemicals and the ubiquitous use of sex for advertising.

Its protagonist Juan is a stressed and jaded hack who is sent by his celebrity gossip magazine to interview young model Susi, who's been transformed into the image for a new perfume.

It's a ruse dreamt up by a chemical company to mask its culpability for the deaths of several children after using one of its drug products.

The deception is exposed and Susi, an icon of beauty and purity, becomes a vilified outcast overnight.

Juan and Susi fall in love - their relationship has echoes of that between Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe - but she is already at the end of her tether and contemplating suicide.

But in a clever twist at the end, she fails to go through with it. And it is Juan, who blames "the system we live in" for so many messed-up lives, who takes his own life.

Once again, director Sam Walters presents us with a tightly woven drama.

He teases out the play's deep humanity and dramatic possibilities to the limit and designer Katy Mills manages, with only a table and a couple of chairs, to transport us into a newsroom, a bedroom, a lift and a living room.

A tremendous cast led by Mia Austen as the innocently vulnerable model and Steven Elder as the journalist are ably supported by Rebecca Pownall as Juan's wife Celia, David Antrobus and James Joyce.

Runs until October 6. Box office: (020) 8940-3633.