Set in a grotty pub toilet on New Year's Eve, Maggie Nevill's play features a group of women who take a man hostage until he's coughed up the 50 quid he owes the woman he's recently dumped.
His name is Matt, but the women call him "the shagaround" because he slept with another woman before he dumped his girlfriend. So starts a play built almost entirely around gags about what utterly pathetic bastards men are. No news there, but a twist comes late on with the revelation of who Matt actually slept with.
The play could easily have been commissioned by SCUM - the Society for Cutting Up Men - and anti-male jokes abound. For example, why are men like Aramis? Answer: they're expensive, they smell and they come in a box. But any idea that this is a balanced view of gender relations doesn't really wash. The devil (Matt) has few of the best lines, and speculations on the state of modern relationships come right out of the problem pages of Cosmopolitan magazine.
The dramatic imbalance wouldn't matter if there was a stronger sense of who these women are and how they are related. Each of them talks and behaves as though they're 18-30, but the cast are plainly almost entirely 30-40. Television presenter Toyah Willcox is a case in point, but the fact that she seems to be playing a character about 15 years younger than she is, is the least of her problems. More serious is the fact that her character is a big-sister cipher who shows little personality until the melodramatic ending.
There is more substantial characterisation in the form of Sal who is weepily depressed after being dumped by her boyfriend. Elizabeth Berrington turns her into a likeably gawky frump with amoebic self-esteem. But best of all is Diane Parish as the ball-busting black woman who drags Matt into the toilet until he pays his debt. Parish contrasts strutting wit and attitude with emotional vulnerability and self-doubt - so creating a well-rounded human being. Elsewhere, Nevill's writing trades too heavily on toilet humour and flushes an interesting scenario down the pan.
Until 18 August. Box office: 020 7478 0100.
The Shagaround
