Mike Bartlett's new play, Contractions, looks at the small print of "Duty of Care" in contemporary management. Bartlett places 'us' before a beguilingly plausible Human Resources Manager ('them') using a succession of increasingly penetrating questions to interrogate workplace relationships. They begin in 'friendly chat' mode, though the disembodied menace behind them soon becomes terrifying. Fortunately there is a profusion of wit too, which allows us to enjoy and laugh at the play.

We (i.e. - 'Us') are represented by Emma (Abigail Hood), an eager-to-please, hard-working employee who, in these economically-dependent times, needs at all costs to keep her job. Her Human Resources Manager ('Them', Jennie Johns) guides her through the precise terms of her contract, smiling like a razor, whilst never leaving her company agenda. She presents, with wonderfully superficial feigning, its unacceptable face.

The succession of interviews spares no stitch of Emma's privacy. We feel her every discomfort as her most intimate behaviour is questioned with the detached precision of asking her how she might boil an egg. The rules all belong to the company. Bartlett makes the power it exerts manifestly clear. It owns Emma.

The direction, by Miriam Higgins, and the two actors are superlative - a triumph for The Oxford Fringe. Abigail Hood, responds to her manager much as we would. Her situation becomes increasingly bizarre, though her responses are never less than credible. Jennifer Johns creates a monstrous automaton of a character with the consistency that make her every reaction predictable. It's a compelling role that never fails to fascinate. Her rich dramatic layers are like watching a female Richard III.

A very enjoyable evening of theatre at The Old Fire Station; playing until Saturday June 7th

Mike Bartlett's pitch-black two-hander began life as the Radio 4 play Love Contract, and was originally staged in an upstairs office at the Royal Court. This 50-minute play takes the form of a series of short interviews between the human resources manager of a multinational company and Emma, a young woman working in the sales division. The interviews start out broadly neutral in tone, albeit with a mildly sinister undercurrent, take a turn for the overtly comic in the middle part of the play, before becoming something far nastier by the end.

Miriam Higgins' production of Contractions for Leaning House theatre company is an intense experience that brings out the both the comic and darkly satirical aspects of Bartlett's script. As the unnamed HR manager, the excellent Jennifer Johns is full of synthetic politeness and manufactured concern, robotically adhering to the letter of corporate policy while dismissing everything else as irrelevant small-talk. By contrast, Abigail Hood elicits enormous sympathy for the much put-upon Emma as she tries to conduct a relationship with a colleague without falling foul of the company's directives with regard to the “perpetration” of romantic and sexual acts. Director Higgins keeps the play taut and fast moving, the individual interviews punctuated only by a burst of static or a few disjointed musical notes. Set and lighting are stark and minimal, increasing the sense of claustrophobia as Emma's world gradually shrinks to a single office.

Leaning House's production of Contractions is at once ludicrous and terrifyingly plausible – an unholy mash-up of Dilbert and 1984 – and should be seen by anyone who has ever signed, or is thinking of signing, a contract with an employer.