End of Story, Chelsea Theatre, London

Lili, a fiftysomething Parisian, writes children's stories but has started to lose the plot in her life. Knocking back glasses of vin rosé and smoking, she awaits the return from work of her husband, Marco, a second generation Italian immigrant who runs his own insurance company. While playing schoolteachers, their granddaughter has found a hidden notebook, blank except for an 11-line entry from Marco recording how he hooted his horn at a pretty girl in the street, how her breasts bounced "as if someone was having her from behind", and how it feels ridiculous at his age to be writing down his secret feelings, as though he were young and in love. Lili treats it as a devastating personal insult, and begins a scab-picking inquest on their relationship that she will come to regret.

In three scenes set over that night, and a fourth that jumps six months ahead, End of Story, by the French playwright Veronique Olmi, compellingly charts the marriage's break-up. The play receives its English premiere thanks to Graham Cowley, the producer of Out of Joint and Two's Company, who present this attractively acted version. He discovered the piece in Paris four years ago, staged by the Comédie-Française; in the absence of an English translation, Cowley produced his own witty, tactful rendering. In him and director John Joe Turner, the dramatist has persuasive advocates here.

Part of the play's skill lies in its wry but unflinching observation of the tortuous course of marital rows: those lulls of exhausted intimacy in the midst of loggerheads ranting; the recourse to self-fulfilling logic; the risks of being hoist by your own petard; and the use of children as psychological weapons.

Tricia Thorns vividly communicates Lili's volatility and her tragicomic sense of being able to see herself but not stop herself. Martyn Whitby eloquently subsides into a weary resignation as the easy-going Marco. The piece has a clever structure, showing us first the effect of this marital strife on the granddaughter and holding in reserve until the final scene a quietly lethal encounter with their daughter, Cecile, who, estranged from Lili, still sees her father. There's a telling sequence early on when, woken by a row, the granddaughter gravely walks to the front door and rings the bell to rouse them from their brutal bickering. The damage being done to her, though, pales besides that which we deduce has been inflicted on Cecile (a coolly furious Amber Batty) over the years.

The programme lists a dozen other dramatic works by Veronique Olmi. On the evidence of End of Story, I suspect a rummage through this back catalogue would be worthwhile.

To 14 Dec (020-7352 1967)