Henry (David Haig), an astrophysicist desperately aware that his career is blighted unless he can publish his research very soon, and his knowing wife Sonia (Belinda Lang) are having a quiet night in. Well, not all that quiet: it is constantly interrupted by their six-year-old son's demands for biscuits and attention and by the rising tension between them.
Things are about to take a turn for the worse. The doorbell rings; to Henry's horror it is his influential boss, Hubert (David Yelland), with his wife, Inès (Serena Evans). They are expecting dinner. One set of couples has obviously got the date confused. What follows is the dinner party from hell: no food but chocolate finger biscuits and cheesy Wotsits, plus copious amounts of Sancerre that soon have the bile and hidden resentments flowing.
We have been here before on the West End stage. Many, many times before - almost always with the Sancerre, although possibly without the cheesy Wotsits. They are a nice touch, but playwright Yasmina Reza, who has perfected the art of apparently artless entertainment, has another trick up her sleeve: why not play the same scenario in three slightly different ways with slightly different outcomes? How droll.
Actually, it is mildly amusing, although by the third iteration familiarity has bred contempt. We know by now and far too well that Henry is a self-doubting loser, that his wife is smarter and stronger than him, and that Hubert is an arrogant bastard and Inès downtrodden and unhappy. This quartet are beginning to outstay their welcome and less than 90 minutes has passed.
As a sub-Ayckbourn study of suburban angst, it just about passes muster, but as ever with Reza there is something pretentious about the evening as it strains to be philosophical. It tries to say something profound about the human state and just ends up being inconsequential. Her couples may be reaching for the stars but they are lying face down in the gutter - a gutter that for all its metropolitan chic seems unable to deliver a takeaway pizza or a chicken tikka masala. These kind of improbabilities start to grate.
Not so the performances, which are finely tuned and finely nuanced. The actors put the flesh on Reza's skeletal creations; they bring meat to the drama. She owes them a slap-up dinner.
·Until December 3. Box office: 020-7836 8888.
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