Award-winning playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig is one of the most exciting voices in European drama. He has worked as a journalist, translator and dramaturg, and his plays have been successfully produced in over forty countries. The Golden Dragon was the German critics' Play of the Year in 2010 and is published by Oberon Books. Oberon also publishes Schimmelpfennig's Arabian Night and The Woman Before, while his other works include Push Up 1 – 3, The Child Who Could Fly, Here I Am and Winter Solstice. Ets Productions, New Wimbledon Studio). Matthew is currently developing a number of full-length plays.

Joe Schimmelpfennig

Roland Schimmelpfennig. Two of his plays, translated as Push Up and The Woman Before, have been performed at the Royal Court Theatre in London. Lust and loneliness in the office. Work rage: David Tennant in Roland Schimmelpfennig's Push Up, a subtle and original play about corporate life.

In the first, Sabine (Lucy Whybrow) is trying to discover from a senior executive, Angelika (Sian Thomas), why she has been turned down for a coveted top job in the company's Delhi office. The fact that Angelika believes that Sabine has been sleeping with her husband, Kramer, the firm's boss, certainly hasn't helped. In the second, a thirtysomething executive, Robert (David Tennant), turns down a proposal from Patrizia (Jaqueline Defferary) for a new TV ad, identical, it turns out, to the one we have already heard described, except that the puddle is now located in New York's Central Park.

Alexander Schimmelpfennig

The fact that these two once had great illicit sex together in Kramer's office, and were both too proud to contact the other afterwards, merely adds to their animosity. In the third dialogue we return to the Delhi job for which both the elderly Hans (Robin Soans) and the thrusting young Frank (Nigel Lindsay) are competing.

Yet what is palpable here, as in the two preceding scenes, is the emptiness of the characters' lives. Hans is addicted to his exercise bike, just as Frank is addicted to porn on the internet. Mars Mission Game Codes more.

And as the three sets of opponents describe their anxious existences, they often use exactly the same words to describe the same experience. These people ought to be friends or lovers - not opponents. Ramin Gray's excellent production, stylishly designed by Rodney Grant, does full justice to a subtle and original work play that hauntingly captures the anomie, loneliness and paranoia of modern business life. There isn't a weak performance from an outstanding cast, but the barely controlled aggression between between Whybrow and Thomas in the first dialogue, and the undertow of lust between Tennant and Defferary in the second are particularly riveting. But it is Peter Sproule and Flaminia Cinque as the humble security guards who suggest the possibility of warmth and affection in a cold climate. Such consoling values, though, seem entirely beyond the reach of the movers and shakers caught up in the deadly coils of capitalism.

• Until March 2. Tickets: 020 7565 5000.