Another view on Amphibians

Amphibians brilliantly catches the joy and intensity of competitive swimming – but its coach is a bit foul-mouthed!
Arty strokes … Amphibians Photograph: Richard Davenport

I found this play very moving. It's about two former Olympic swimmers, Max and Elsa, who are looking back to when they were teenagers, at the height of their professional training. It's performed in a disused Victorian swimming baths, underneath what is now a theatre. The atmosphere is perfect: the audience sits on tiered seating, much like you find alongside a professional pool.

There's no water in the pool, so nobody gets wet, but the play uses choreography brilliantly to convey the joy and intensity of swimming. We see the actors standing on blocks, just as they would in a real race: their diving positions are just right. Their front crawl and backstroke are more stylised and arty, however; they wouldn't get very far in a pool using those strokes.

Max and Elsa are lovers as well as team-mates. That does happen a lot in swimming teams. Unlike in the US, where girls' and boys' teams tend to be separate, over here boys and girls train together. When Max is selected for the Olympic squad and Elsa isn't, you really feel her heartbreak; when I was 16, I went to the trials for the Moscow Olympics and didn't get through, which was devastating. Elsa's also upset when Max says he doesn't want to have sex with her the night before his Olympic race. I don't know whether Olympic swimmers abstain in this way, but it reflects their need for total focus.

At one point, the coach admits that he had to withdraw from the Olympic team because he went out the night before a competition and took drugs. This has happened – the sport is very tight on drug-testing, so anyone caught using performance-enhancing or social drugs will be served with a one- or two-year ban. But I was shocked by how often the coach swears at the swimmers. When I was training, even the toughest coach would never use bad language like that – and I'd certainly never get away with using it with the swimmers I coach now.

Amphibians is at the Bridewell Theatre, London EC1 (020-7922 2922), until 28 January.