Allport's syndrome is a rare genetic and highly degenerative kidney disease. There is no cure except a kidney transplant, although dialysis can keep the patient alive for several years. In Anthony Melnikoff's play, 23-year-old Jonathan is bright, thoughtful, in the first throes of love and the final stages of Allport's syndrome. He has everything to live for, but unless he gets a transplant within the next few weeks he will almost certainly die. His father, Arnold, a Jewish human rights lawyer, has spent his life saving the world but is unable to save his son because he has already donated a kidney to his elder son Graham, also an Allport's suffer. However, Arnold isn't prepared to let a little thing like his own death stand in the way of his son's future.
This is one of those plays that is heartfelt, intelligent and so well meant that you feel churlish to even think about criticising it, but while it makes for a good debate about personal and medical ethics, it makes for pretty dull theatre. That is not because there is no drama - there is, rather too much, with the fainting and the hysterics - but because the characters are never more than mouthpieces for ideas.
The most interesting relationship, between Arnold and his unsympathetic wife, whose genes brought this "curse" down on her sons, is both overwritten and under-developed. You leave feeling that you haven't seen a play but a dramatised plea for more people to have organ donor cards. Allport's Revenge has its place as part of an education programme, but it doesn't deserve its place in a theatre that prides itself on new writing.
· Until February 28. Box office: 020-7373 3842.
