"Nuts". Burton Taylor Studio

I have no idea if Coco Cottam will go on to become a famous, successful playwright. The only famous, successful playwright I know didn’t write so much as a line of dialogue until ten years after graduating. The future’s not ours to see.

But in so far as it’s possible to measure these things, Cottam seems to be going about it the right way. Nuts is her third play (the third I’ve seen anyway), and not only is each of them a gem, but they get better each time. Her previous works, Wishbone and Bedbugs (click on the titles to read my reviews), were more theme- than plot-driven, as non-linear and intriguing as they were funny and moving. With Nuts, Cottam has come down to earth, and created a piece of true narrative drama.

It's a concentrated, character-driven scenario that reveals dark secrets from the past even as it moves forwards in time. Friends, business-partners and flat-sharers Eve and Nina need a new co-tenant, and it arrives in the shape of ‘hot male’ Liberty. But the appearance of Lib’s ex-girlfriend Tash raises disturbing and traumatic questions about his presence and intentions.

What plays out is a brilliantly timed dance of status, mistrust, desire and duplicity. Liberty’s disruptive appearance in the flat acts as a kind of emotional laxative for the two women, and it all comes tumbling out.

Nuts has overtones of early Pinter about it, especially his 1960 masterpiece The Caretaker. As in that play, the interloper’s presence leads to a piercing psychological study of power and allegiance. And as with Pinter, Nuts is replete with pregnant pauses, and characters testing and second-guessing each other. (At one point Nina says to Eve, ‘You feel awkward’ and, just like Pinter, it’s both an observation and an instruction.) In The Caretaker there is a repeating, tension-twisting sound-effect of a drip in a bucket, and in Nuts the emotional stakes are amplified by a subtle soundscape of ticks and cello squeaks, as if Bernard Herrman is tuning up for Psycho.

The ‘Nuts’ of the title offer a self-referential hint to the unfolding story: at first they seem merely to be what Liberty likes to eat (and a healthy proportion of this show’s budget must have gone on pistachios). Later the idea of nuts as ‘crazy’ takes over. But ultimately, it’s those nuts men carry around in their trousers that hang at the heart of the drama.

Frequently, the bareness of sets in Oxford productions is a sad reflection on the lack of design and construction capability in student drama. But in this show, the simplicity is both fitting and vital. A couple of chairs and a table provide the perfect environment, turning all our focus on the pyrotechnics going off between the characters.

And talking of the characters, the cast (Alice Macey-Dare a bundle of self-doubt as Eve, Orla Wyatt all smiling control as Nina, Rufus Shutter a mixture of charm and opacity as Lib, and Thalia Kermisch nearly stealing the whole show as Tash with a shattering monologue near the end) play off each other with impressive pace and intimacy, and in the claustrophobic surrounds of the Burton Taylor Studio the audience feels trapped in the intensity of their predicament. Everyone felt so tightly packed this evening that we’ve probably all come away with the latest strain of mpox.

Because of the importance of plot in this play, Cottam has reined in her natural instinct for virtuoso, poetic speeches to focus more on controlled exposition. This does sometimes make the action feel almost too straightforward. When Eve says to Nina, ‘Where are your metaphors, your banks of literary devices?’ I found myself wistfully agreeing. There’s something about enigmatic text that can challenge and draw in an audience, and there are times in the first half of Nuts when the lack of complexity in the plot can feel slightly exposed. Bizarrely, when it reverts to allusive dialogue, minimalist and suggestive, it has more depth than when it’s leading you by the hand through the story. In short, toning down the surrealism in favour of situation removes a little of the theatrical magic.

But this is a minor criticism on what is an accomplished and harrowing piece of drama. If Cottam’s earlier plays were like variations on a musical theme, Nuts is a powerful and melodic suite. Next: a symphony.