The Invisible (Bush Theatre)

Imagine a Polly Toynbee column in dramatic form. Rebecca Lenkiewicz's new play looks at the impact of legal aid cuts, but its bread is so blatantly buttered on one side, that all drama drops out of it. For all I agree with its diagnosis, I can't remember a play so doggedly, tiresomely hectoring.

Adopting the Casualty formula, jump-cutting between different cases, The Invisible centres on Gail (Alexandra Gilbreath), a solicitor with a social conscience. She runs the Cromwell Law Centre, a government-funded practice for those that can't afford legal advice or representation, and it's been hit, dramatically, by cuts.

Accordingly, she's only able to help those in the direst straights: tenants facing imminent eviction, say, but not Shaun (Niall Buggy), a pensioner struggling to repay overpaid benefits, and not Ken (Nicholas Bailey), a father fighting for the right to see his children. Her legal secretary sits behind a stack of cases, scarcely looking up from her laptop, and they're about to lose their low-rent premises as the landlord looks for more profit elsewhere.

Throughout, Lenkiewicz captures the spin-cycle of this recession and skewers the flawed logic of stripping back the state in response. Problems pile up and multiply like mould. Unfeeling policies make individuals turn on one another, so they seek solace in drink and fags – exacerbating every other problem in turn. Everyone's overworked and underpaid, with no time to care for anyone else.

Gail finds herself accosted for legal advice on blind dates. Her secretary (Sirine Saba) takes on other people's problems at the expense of her own relationship. Lenkiewicz exposes the Big Society for what it is: the state leaving others to pick up the slack. The squeezed middle gets further squeezed. The vulnerable go unseen as they fall through the cracks.

Dramatically, though, The Invisible is inert. Being a play about legal aid cuts, we know exactly where it's all heading – just as, in Casualty, anyone that climbs a ladder ends up on a gurney. That freshly arranged marriage ("We're both very blessed") can only end up in abuse. The father representing himself, determined to keep his anger in check, will inevitably explode in court. That makes it very, very hard to care.

It's largely unconvincing too and the cast feel uncomfortable as a hair shirt in Michael Oakley's starch-stiff production, not least when forced to break into dance mid-scene. Gilbreath keeps it anchored as Gail, a saint who can afford to be saintly, but only for now, but others struggle against a play that reduces people to their problems.

These issues are undeniably important, but to have any effect theatre needs to make us care. The Invisible orders us to and so lets us off the hook. We emerge glad it's over, rather than implicated, and direct our frustrations at the play, not the problem.

The Invisible runs at the Bush Theatre until 15 August