David Leddy's White Tea

White Tea begins with the audience donning kimonos, and the two-woman cast distributing cups of tea. This would seem stranger still if we weren't already disorientated by the experience of walking into Assembly's tiny Scott room to find its walls covered with papery fabric and bedecked with origami birds. The production is insulated from the outside world; even the light of the fire exit sign is dimmed by white paper.

Inside this bubble unfolds a touching story of loss and friendship. Naomi, a Scot living in Paris, is visited by Tomoko, a Japanese nurse: her estranged mother has had a stroke (endearingly pronounced "su-tro-ku"); Naomi must go to Kyoto. Gabriel Quigley's vulnerable, spiky Naomi agrees to go with reluctance: she's angry with her mother, who always put her globetrotting career first. Tomoko and Naomi bond once they get to Japan, aided by the shared ritual of tea-drinking. They become close, despite Naomi's bluster and Tomoko's timidity, and together they make some discoveries which complicate Naomi's image of her mother. The plot is rather flaky towards the end. A contrived twist fails to generate the intended tension between the characters, and is easily resolved.

Meanwhile, the scene is almost stolen by the scenery: incredibly versatile lighting combines with projected video images brilliantly to evoke a garden, a lake, a humming metropolis. But although recreating Japan was clearly a labour of love, at heart White Tea is a success because its characters elicit our sympathy, tentatively forming a friendship as they come to terms with the past.