Nicole Kidman. Jerry Hall. Peter Bowles? West End producers' lust for celebrity skin may be getting out of control. One doubts that a flash of Bowles's resplendent rump will have Kidman's arousing effect on ticket sales - but Ron Hutchinson's new play may need all the help it can get. It's a two-hander, in which Regency dandy Beau Brummell, exiled in Calais, in penury, reflects on a debonair life in English high society.
Hutchinson, who wrote the 1984 Royal Court hit Rat in the Skull, is clearly fascinated by Brummell, who became hugely significant for his expertise in a hugely insignificant field. "My genius is in wearing clothes," purrs Bowles's Beau, and, in Caroline Hunt's production, getting dressed is a sensual and meticulous ritual. But the Beau's better days are behind him. Hutchinson depicts a man gasping for the oxygen of other people's regard, fantasising that the Prince of Wales - whom he once called "fat" - will appear with an invitation to go home.
It's a mildly diverting character study, but the character has nowhere to go. He's locked in a room with a valet who, in seeking to engage him in debates about fashion versus democracy and fame for fame's sake, suggests less of his character than that of the playwright. Marooned in sub-Godot purposelessness, Brummell tries to top himself with a lack of conviction characteristic of this production.
Soliloquising dreamily into the middle distance, Bowles plays the Beau with a fatigued hauteur: "When one has nothing left," he drawls, "one does have style." He delivers each line as if it were a Wildean witticism, which Hutchinson's script can only occasionally justify. Richard McCabe plays the valet with a permanent sneer, when - because of the Beau's superciliousness - the role cries out for a little audience-friendly charm.
But the production's terminal problem is the pair's relationship. They don't have one: neither actors nor characters communicate. There's no tension, joy or dynamism between them to compensate for the play's narrative inertia. When Brummell describes the affinity between his grandfather, a valet, and the toff who employed him - "There was a bond between them, a shared purpose, a friendship" - he draws attention to the qualities absent from a production as starched as his famous collars.
Until August 11. Box office: 020-7930 8800.
