An Englishman's home is supposed to be his castle, but when Stuart falls asleep on the sofa one night after a normal evening of footie on the TV, pizza and beer, he wakes up to a nightmare: his flat has been invaded by a family of asylum seekers. Led by the menacing Bobo, a man with a knife and five wives, the family coerces Stuart into waiting hand and foot on them and handing over his wages and the keys to his flat.
When his girlfriend, Sarah, arrives, she clearly finds Bobo rather more virile and attractive than the limp Stuart. In desperation, Stuart seeks help - only to find that his boss's home has been similarly invaded, and the official who runs the local housing office can't understand a word he says. Even his attempt to get a British bulldog tattoo goes wrong: he ends up with a pink poodle on his bum.
The idea is a potentially interesting one, and clearly some satire is intended here, but this bewildering 90 minutes is so inept in almost every respect that it's impossible to work out its true purpose. Neither the bigoted Englishman nor the grasping asylum seekers come out of it well, and the show is as much a stylistic mess as it is a thematic one. Naturalistic exchanges sit side-by-side with filmed interludes, dream sequences, surreal interventions and even, at one mind-boggling point, an attempt to emulate the 1970s-style British sex farce, with added Viagra.
The final scene, at a conference of the Asylum Seekers Party, is the best and most powerful, but even here the satire is of a highly camp, scattergun variety. In other circumstances you might forgive the sheer silliness of the approach, but it's a wasted opportunity to make a serious theatrical intervention into a red-hot political issue.
· Until April 23. Box office: 020-7269 1606.
