There are more people squeezed into this tiny pub theatre than it probably sees in a month together. Such is the lure of Chris Morris, recently attacked for his satire on the media's treatment of paedophilia. You have to admire the Etcetera theatre company for going ahead with this production of sketches from Blue Jam, Morris's late-night radio show, in the thick of the furore.
This is a well-constructed, deftly acted show that reminds us that Morris is no mere scandal-monger but a writer of coruscating comedy that manages to be brutally funny, desperately sad and utterly bewildering at once. Here we meet the man who hates his wife so much he deliberately has his legs chopped off so that he can make her suffer.
Then there's the policeman who confesses to killing a boy while driving drunk, then asks the mother if he can kip in the child's bed. And there's the anguished woman who calls in the plumber when her child dies aged only three weeks. "I know he can be mended," she says. "It's just tubes." Morris doesn't create these warped individuals simply for the sake of courting controversy: his distorted take on human relationships shows us people's selfishness, cruelty, carelessness and redeeming optimism taken to their logical conclusion.
Kirsty Housley directs the multimedia production with a sure hand and, in a strong ensemble, Jasper Holmes shines as a man who wanders the streets innocently carrying a metal object that just happens to be a gun. These sketches have already been performed on the radio or in Morris's Jam TV series last year; seeing them in the theatre adds nothing, but reminds us how much we would be missing if Morris were ever taken off the air.
Until September 2. Box office: 020-7482 4857.
