Mike Leigh's Ecstasy at the Hampstead Theatre

Mike Leigh is best known for his gritty work such as Abigail's Party, Secrets and Lies and Vera Drake. At the beginning of his career he wrote a frank play about the common tragedy that can be everyday life in Britain. Now he's decided to resurrect this play, directing it himself to boot.

There is something exciting about seeing a play that a famous film director has not only written, but is also personally directing. So when, just before the curtain went up, I spotted the veteran director in the audience a few rows in front of me, my heart started beating just a little faster again.

Ecstasy is set in 1979, a time that I too find fascinating. It's the end of the the Labour rule in Britain, end of the Winter of Discontent with its strikes, electricity cuts and student demos. Margaret Thatcher has just won the elections and there's a faint whiff of hope in the air.

Except none of this makes the slightest bit of difference to Jean, who to combat the boredom and poverty of her life as a petrol station attendant drinks heavily in her bedsit, while a string of uncaring boyfriends come and go. Jean's quiet suffering is brilliantly portrayed by Sian Brooke who with her shoulders slumped, chain smokes and often struggles to curve her slips into the faintest of smiles.

Even Jean's best friend, Val (Sinead Matthews), a frantic mother and wife of a loveable drunk, Mick (Allen Leech), fails to penetrate - or even see - Jean's private misery. Then when Jean's old boyfriend, the boring but gentle, Len - skilfully played by Craig Parkinson - suddenly reappears the audience is led to believe Jean could at last find happiness.

But Mike Leigh's work is never this straigth-forward.

Because even though the misery and unhappiness of the actors is tangible there is also great comic moments in the play. Sinead Matthews pins down the multilayered emotions of the wife of an alcoholic - her desperate worry for the future of her family encased by a willingness to love and be loved - with the funny lines Leigh has given her. While Craig Parkinson's Len, who's also looking for love, is oblivious to the complexity of human emotion. His naivety too is comic but also frustrating. At times I felt like shouting down to the stage, 'Kiss her, NOW!'

The run of Ecstasy has now ended at Hampstead, but luckily it has moved for a short time to the Duchess Theatre. I urge you to go and see this play - it's like a short, live piece of a Mike Leigh film. What could be better?