March seems to be the month for plays about the frighteningly spiraling cost of property, with a number of playwrights imagining young couples signing up for bizarre, twisted conditions in return for a place to live. If Mike Bartlett's
Game was a
Big Brother nightmare though, Matt Hartley's
Deposit feels grimly plausible. Ben (Ben Addis) and Rachel (Akiya Henry) know that paying inflated rent even on a tiny flat will mean they'll never raise the deposit for their own place. If they could find a way to halve the rent though, they could scrimp and save and have something to show for it at the end of a year. So they move into a one-bedroom studio with Rachel's old university roommate: They'll take the bedroom and Melanie (Laura Morgan) and boyfriend Sam (Jack Monaghan, so handsome our Earth instruments are unable to measure it,) will take the sofabed, and a makeshift screen will be their only hint of privacy.
