Approaches perfection: Medea, @sohoplace, reviewed

Winner’s Curse is a hybrid drama by Dan Patterson and Daniel Taub which opens as a lecture by a fictional diplomat, Hugo Leitski (a dinner-jacketed Clive Anderson). Leitski offers to teach us the subtle art of negotiation. An expert diplomat, he explains, must convince each side that they’re the winners in the negotiation and that their opponents have lost. In his youth he helped to broker peace between two Slavic nations, Karvistan and Moldonia, and the action switches from Leitksi’s lecture room to a seedy hotel, the Black Lagoon Lodge, where the peace deal was agreed.

The lodge is run by a wonderfully sardonic widow, Vaslika, who asks each new guest which party they belong to. ‘Liars or blackmailers?’ As the talks continue, she stomps off to hunt wild game and keeps returning to the lobby with fresh prey slung from her shoulder: squirrels, seagulls, pigeons, pike and carp – at least that’s what they look like.