The bride rushes into the bathroom. She tosses away her bouquet and her dress, leaps naked into the bath and sinks under the bubbles in relief.
The next 80 minutes are all suds and froth in Charles L Mee's play inspired by Aeschylus's ancient drama, The Suppliants, about the 50 sisters who, when they are unwillingly contracted to marry their cousins, seek asylum. When no one will help them, they decide to become their own country with their own laws. In Mee's version, what follows gives new meaning to the word bloodbath.
Melissa Kievman's confident production is delightfully acted, Hannah Clark's pink boudoir design is practically perfect, and there is never a moment when Big Love isn't big fun: daft but enjoyable. The sisters' American male cousins arrive in a flurry of testosterone and confetti; cunningly deployed music controls the emotional peaks and troughs, and the dialogue is often smart.
So why do I hesitate to recommend this play wholeheartedly? In part because it is so full of itself; winsome and knowing, it could almost be auditioning for a Hollywood option, possibly with Julia Roberts in the lead.
My biggest reservation is that it treats no aspect of its politics - sexual or otherwise - with any seriousness. The dilemma of Piero - who owns the mansion where the sisters turn up, but fears that if he offers them asylum it may put his house's safety at risk - is treated in the most cursory manner. Likewise the discussion of sexual politics: the debate never rises above Constantine's suggestion that a man must be a man even if that means taking a woman by force, and the sisters' lament as to why a man can't be more like a woman.
The final message that love is preferable to justice is straight out of Mills & Boon, and might not slip down with such hilarity if there was a party of battered wives in the audience.
· Until October 21. Box office: 020-7229 0706.
