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4 stars Telegraph, Jane Shilling, 3 December 2012

There is a graceful nod to the Royal Court’s past as the cradle of kitchen-sink drama in the sets for the new play by EV Crowe, whose debut, Kin, premiered there in 2010. The action is set in a pair of kitchens, the more stylish of which belongs to Joe and Danny, a gay married couple who are hoping to adopt a child.
This is Joe’s second marriage: his ex-wife, Kate, is briefly referred to by his turbulent old college friend Jamie (a fine performance by Daniel Mays, suffused with hapless rage), who now teaches at the primary school where Danny also works.
Danny, a sweet-natured optimist, is adored by his pupils; Jamie, we learn, less so. During the play’s first act, he twice erupts into Joe and Danny’s kitchen in a state of extreme distress. On the first occasion, he is upset because a seven-year-old has called him “gay”. On the second, he has been beaten up by a gang of older children who also suppose him to be gay.
Tensions seethe: Jamie’s wife Lisa is trying to conceive by means of IVF. The question of who, if anyone, “deserves” to have a child hangs in the air. Joe, a journalist, is concerned that Danny’s sunny openness about his homosexuality will compromise their chance of adopting.
EV Crowe’s drama fizzes like a firework with more ideas than it has time to explore. On the surface, it seems rather lacking in dramatic tension: Joe and Danny are so clearly nicer and better balanced than troubled, tactless, homophobic Jamie and Lisa – a tightly-wrapped bundle of nerves who is convinced that something awful will befall the baby she eventually manages to conceive – that the argument about who will make better parents is won almost before it is stated.
But ominous undercurrents proliferate. Danny’s captivating sense of his own charm and invulnerability has dark roots — the play opens with an extraordinary monologue about his brother’s death, which we never revisit, though it hovers over the unfolding drama, mirrored by Lisa’s belief that Jamie somehow attracts bad luck.
Crowe’s interestingly flawed drama is given an authority which it almost deserves by Jeremy Herrin’s crisp direction, beautifully precise sound and lighting by Ian Dickinson and Rick Fisher, and an impressive quartet of performances by Liam Garrigan as Danny, Tim Steed as Joe, Daniel Mays as Jamie and Susannah Wise as Lisa.