Who is best placed to look after the baby of a drug-using prostitute? The mother herself, who for all her problems still has a natural empathy with the child? Or a wealthy couple whose childlessness is the one thing lacking in their perfect lifestyle?

If Polly Teale's play sounds like an issue drama which is more methodical than imaginative, that's certainly how it starts. Katy Stephens's scarily stylish Woman and Alistair Petrie's frighteningly together Man - yep, they're too minimalist even to have names - live in a home so white that you want to jump on stage and spill some coffee on their floor. They butt up against her Mother (more issues ahoy), played by Marion Bailey, then meet Lorraine Stanley's Rose, the birth mother out to undercut their sense of parenthood.

Blimey, you think, if I wanted a lesson in adoption I'd get a leaflet from the council.

But then Mine stops being something as clear and neat as the couple's home and starts to give us an unusually astute, bird's-eye-view of the messiness of life. Yes, the troubles of bringing up baby are ticked off: the Woman lacks sleep and patience; her harried sister (Clare Lawrence Moody) lets her in on the pitfalls of being defined as a homemaker.

But Teale and her company, Shared Experience, are used to taking pre-existing material, usually classic literature, and being faithful and playful with it. Here, the Woman's unconscious life is represented by a child (Sophie Stone) playing with her doll's house. Teale the director uses projections and music to summon up a woozy mood that suggests all is not as it appears.

And Teale the writer dislodges certainties with emotionally acute depictions of the power-play between mother and child, husband and wife. The artifice gets dealt with, as Woman chides her own attraction to “some absurd notion of life without mess”. And so these stiffs come alive, and a lucid overview turns into something unusual and gripping.

The cast rise to the challenge - the resolute Stephens turns vulnerable; the rigidly rational Petrie loses his cool. Teale's play sets up then undercuts glamour to suggest letting go is the first step to taking control. Sure, characters reach for their emotional triggers quicker than is strictly lifelike. But then, never mind first appearances, Mine is not strictly lifelike. It's far more interesting than that.

Box office: 020-7722 9301. To Oct 25, then touring: www.sharedexperience.org.uk

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