Part of the Oxford University Drama Society's New Writing Festival, Some Sort of Beautiful is an original play by Corinne Furness. The action takes place during the course of Jay's 29th birthday party, where he and his wife, Sophie, play host to four guests. All six were close friends at university, but their fortunes have gone downhill since the halcyon undergraduate years that loom so large in their memories. As the drunken evening progresses, the characters confront one another over betrayals and old enmities; reminisce about the good old days; and wonder where it all went wrong.

Brittle and nagging Sophie radiates misery; and Jay is taking refuge from life and marriage in a whisky bottle. Kate is recovering from cancer. Harry, a successful artist, is nonetheless plagued by guilt over his abandonment of Kate once her illness was diagnosed. Will, the nice-guy teacher, refuses to let on whether he's happy or not, but implies he isn't. Only happy-go-lucky Julia is content, but hers is a very minor role, included to contrast her uncomplicated enjoyment of life with the introspective moroseness of her peers.

The play successfully captures a mood and a moment in its protagonists' lives that rings true: a post-university, late 20s crisis when the heady opening up of life's possibilities and the initial excitement of working for a living descends into the mundane disappointments of adult life: careers, missed opportunities and relationships well beyond their honeymoon. It also observes well how such close-knit university friendship groups work: despite an apparent harmony, they often contain awkward romantic tensions and people who dislike one another, and fragment as their members drift apart.

The dialogue is articulate and insightful, although I found the poetical evocations of long-lost summers (wind rippling the waters of lochs and so forth), the literary references (Byron, Shelley, Scott Fitzgerald) and the excessive doses of symbolism (the key motif of the chess game, for example) rather too writerly. The playwright successfully captures, however, the speech of her educated, middle-class artistic types and develops the story and her themes with assurance.

There is an interesting political parallel to the memories of the golden Brideshead summer term of 1997 and the subsequent decline and fall. Kate recalls how the key events in that term took place against the backdrop of Blair's first election victory. The subsequent downturn in all their fortunes seems to deliberately mirror many people's disillusionment with New Labour. Fleeting references to Iraq and tution fees support this. This gives a welcome added dimension to the play, which might have profitably been built upon.

The props and music all create the right moof of young, comfortable, rather conventional trendiness. Bland and beige IKEA and recent REM in the present; a bit of The Verve at the end to remind us how great 1997 was. The acting is watchable and our sympathies for the characters are engaged, without dragging out any strong emotions. Holly Midwinter-Porter stood out as the resilient, spirited and independent Kate.

The Writer's Notes describe this as a play about 'friendship, perception and memory', and it certainly explores these themes with intelligence and dramatic skill. It deserves an audience.