Virgins

Of all the incidents that could possibly bring a family closer together, the discovery of a teenage boy's sexually transmitted infection might not seem likely to make the top ten.

Virgins is about as far as you can get from a patronising Theatre in Education show (or a medically-focussed sex education lesson) while still highlighting the depressing realities of teenage sexual behaviour.

Playwright John Retallack has a knack of taking major social issues affecting young people and creating quite outstanding plays that move, entertain and inform, but never preach. With Virgins, he proves that his outstanding 2001 production Hannah and Hanna was no fluke, and that his Company of Angels is one of the country's most important theatre groups.

A wild house party changes the lives of brother and sister Jack and Zoe (a pair of excellent performances by Stefan Butler and Emily Woodward) - she meets her future boyfriend; he gets off his face, has sex on a bathroom floor and wakes up at 6am in the front garden.

The repercussions of this night are nowhere near as straightforward as they seem. While parents Suzie and Nick try to walk the fine line between discipline and support, their own relationships past and present come under scrutiny.

Nobody, not even holier-than-thou virgin Zoe, emerges unscathed, but for a play about an extremely unpleasant problem, Virgins has a touchingly happy and optimistic ending.

It is part of the Company of Angels manifesto to introduce young audiences to new experiences at the theatre, and this goes some way to explaining the inclusion of dance in this production. While the script is strong enough that it has no real need for these extra flourishes, the movement sections are nonetheless dynamic and well-performed.

Virgins embarks on a UK tour following the Fringe - in an ideal world, it would visit every secondary school in the country.