A balcony on a balmy evening. A man and a woman. Something is in the air, but this is no Romeo and Juliet. For a start, the woman has a gun and she has already proved she can use it - on her husband's dog. American playwright John Patrick Shanley has never been able to repeat the success of his first play Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, although he has repeated himself both on stage and screen - he wrote the screenplay for Moonstruck - as he explored the Italian or Irish American male getting in touch with his heart.
Here it is divorcee Huey and his friend Aldo who are trying to make sense of their feelings and their relationships with women. Huey has never got over his divorce from Janice and is suffering from depression, a desire to wear a beret and an inability to stop writing terrible poetry. Aldo has never got over his dad (who didn't love him) and his mother (who still does). So when Huey enlists Aldo's help in his reconciliation with Janice, it turns out to be an object lesson in love and affection for both men.
Shanley makes some awkward gestures towards absurdism and some embarrassing attempts to break down the fourth wall, but at its heart this is old-fashioned romantic comedy with lots of tears and homespun truths as the characters try to deal with "what was" so they can move into the future.
In a good production you might not notice all the therapy speak ("I feel everything is over for me unless I get back and fix this broken place.") and angst quite so much, but this is not good. Time passes slowly as the cast expend most of their energy on dodgy accents, very little on the performances and none at all on picking up cues.
· Until September 4. Box office: 020-7373 3842.
