Justin Butcher scored the surprise hit of the year with The Madness of George Dubya. Now he repeats the format by using JB Priestley's An Inspector Calls as the basis for attacking the Iraq war. But the show inevitably lacks the anarchic wildness that came from previously deploying Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove as the satiric source.
On the eve of Bush's re-election, a weapons inspector named Dan Styx turns up at the White House to indict the pro-war faction. Dubya emerges as a bumbling idiot who, told that the war has cost $20bn a month, mutters, "Is that good?" Tony Blair is a shafted patsy who has endorsed the war in exchange for a promised Palestinian homeland. And Bush is still firmly in the grip of the neo-cons, including a riddling "Rummy" Rumsfeld who accuses the Arab people of a failure of moral responsibility but who, when asked why they can't be left alone, patronisingly replies, "They're not responsible."
Where Priestley's Inspector Goole is a strange mix of cop and moral conscience, Butcher's Styx is more like an avenging angel, which robs the play of ambiguity. Within that limitation, however, Butcher lands blow after blow. Laura Dubya touchingly turns against her husband when confronted by the facts about the deaths of Iraqi children. And Arnold Schwarzenegger is portrayed as a robotic lech pursuing Jacqueline Wood's mystical Cherie Blair around the White House with cries of, "Time to get the lipstick round the dipstick."
This show assembles the facts to prove that military intervention was long-planned and that "the inspectors were a preliminary to war, not a prevention".
Wittily performed by Andrew Harrison as a dyslexic Dubya, Mark Heenehan as the inspector and Alasdair Craig as a guileless Blair, the show confirms Butcher's rare talent for blending moral anger with brute farce.
· Until January 10. Box office: 020-7387 6617.
