In real life, impotence is no joke. But in the hermetic world of French farce, where performance is everything, it's a legitimate source of fun. And playwrights Maurice Hennequin and Pierre Veber manage to keep it up here for more than two hours, which is more than can be said for their sadly detumescent hero.
The hapless Vicomte returns from a four-week honeymoon, his marriage unconsummated due to an intrusive customs officer who burst into the marital railway compartment at a crucial moment with a cry of: "Have you anything to declare?" Back in Paris, the hero's in-laws, the Duponts, give him a three-day deadline by which to do his duty. If he fails, his bride will be handed over to a rival suitor, who has a nasty habit of turning up as a heavily disguised douanier to ensure that the Vicomte stays permanently limp.
Desperation, rather than passion, spins the plot. And even if Hennequin and Veber, neatly translated by Robert Cogo-Fawcett and Braham Murray, don't have the epic inventiveness of Feydeau, they manage to play a number of variations on their one joke. As always, what strikes one about French farce is its mix of mathematical precision and bizarre detail. Here, an itinerant Algerian camel-breeder, always looking to strike a deal, turns up (like all the male characters) at the studio of a cocotte who catalogues her clients alphabetically under the names of famous artists, from Botticelli to Watteau. As the outraged Madame Dupont cries: "She's not a woman! She's the Louvre!"
Either you love this kind of thing or you don't. I do, because it turns theatre into an arena for organised panic. And director Sam Walters deftly solves the problem of presenting door-slamming farce in a four-sided space by showing the visible source of the sound effects, with deputy stage manager Samantha Tagg becoming a vital part of the show. There are suitably high-energy performances from Damien Matthews as the frenzied Vicomte, Robert McBain as a de-trousered judge, and Auriol Smith as the hero's mother-in-law, an apt blend of battle-axe ferocity and prurient realism, gorgon and Zola. Great fun.
· Until February 2. Box office: 020-8940 3633.
