THE city of Leeds seeped into playwright Oliver Emanuel in his student days, especially Hyde Park where his encounters with the local bird life led him to call it Magpie Park.

His 70-minute play for the fifth Northern Exposure season of new writing is as black as the magpie's crest, or Leeds Noir to quote his own description of his milieu.

Magpie Park is a two-hander but with extra characters: Leeds itself, which is forever present; magpies both glossy and sick; and a kleptomaniac, Laura, who is never seen yet is the focus of everything that unfolds.

Laura becomes the fixation of Douglas (Liam McKenna), a Londoner moved north to the swish new Harvey Nicks in Briggate, where he is as much gumshoe as buttoned-suit store detective.

He should charge her, but instead they are soon at it in the Queens Hotel. Inhibitions dropped, case dropped too.

In the bed on Barney George's traverse stage is not Laura however, but her younger sister, Poppy (Alison Pargeter, returning to the Yorkshire stage after her fondly remembered days in Alan Ayckbourn's plays in Scarborough). Poppy is no less fixated, talking repeatedly of "the hunter and the hunted, and the amazing vanishing Laura".

Gradually, Emanuel pieces together their stories, which sometimes concur, other times clash, and eventually elide.

Douglas has the facts but not the conclusion, just as he dismissively describes a typical read of the Evening Post as "a thousand stories with no endings". Missing baby clothes, a stolen baby and a disappearing Laura are the clues to be solved, and Emanuel spins his noir yarn with the slow-coiling relish of a macabre Saki story rather than a Hitchcock shock. He is adept at symbolic atmosphere, evoking the ambience and impact on behaviour of hotel and store and park alike; his wit is never predictable and distinctly unusual and darkly playful too; and his characters are constantly evolving and interesting.

In the ebb and flow of Pargeter and McKenna's troubling journey of discovery, Emmanuel's slippery dialogue is natural and unforced (except for an over-reliance on the f' word).

Like magpies, Sam Brown's production unnerves but fascinates; a sorrow and a joy too.


Box office: 0113 213 7700.