Although a hot item in France, Philippe Minyana is virtually unknown in Britain. But on the evidence of Habitats, skilfully anglicised by Steve Waters and directed with stylish chic by Fiona Laird, I suspect he is likely to remain something of a collectors' item over here: blending absurdist philosophy with a densely allusive, highly literary style, he is a long way from our own earthily realistic tradition.
The publicity tells us the show is about pretence and deceit: actually it seems to me about what Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus called the "senseless pantomime" of human existence.
After a brisk prelude in which three narrators describe a series of kitsch holiday idylls, we get down to business with a trio of near monologues that reveal both a universal malaise and the mechanical nature of half-unconscious lives. The chief momentum comes from the audience who between each item shuffle around a room that, in Angela Simpson's design, resembles an expensive salon filled with smart white banquettes.
The first item is the easiest to grasp: a hymn to the joys of polyurethane foam packing delivered by an executive who, in Richard Hansell's performance, resembles a mix of Ricky Gervais from The Office and Alan Partridge.
This satire on the deadly jargon of business is followed by an encounter with a self-conscious actress, silkily personified by Eileen Battye, who escapes from domestic disaster into recitations from Schopenhauer, Beckett and Chekhov. But the third item is the most intriguing: a methodical recreation of the trial of a serial killer, narrated with the right dry, forensic precision by Gerrard McArthur.
I suspect Minyana is trying to tell us, like the French absurdists of the fifties, that we live in a world deprived of meaning in which we hide behind professional rituals or artificial language: the problem is that he denies us the dramatic pleasure of human interaction offering us instead a series of illustrative lectures on his chosen theme. But, even though I found the play's philosophical pessimism resistible, I enjoyed the way it was packaged in Laird's production. The atmosphere is more that of a private party than a play and one is steered around the room by one's hosts - Jonathan Jones, Christine King and Joanna Croll - with an elegant politeness. The ambience is seductive; the problem lies with Minyana's message, which to persistent theatregoers has a slightly frayed familiarity.
· Until December 21. Box office: 020-7229 0706.
