As so often seems to be the case when plays transfer from one space to another, something appears to have happened to this production of Kenneth Lonergan's play on its move from the Donmar Warehouse to the New Ambassadors. How else to explain the rave reviews heaped upon it when it opened in April?
This is a much more intelligent play than Lonergan's This Is Our Youth, which was only lifted above the mediocre by the efforts of its fresh-faced cast. There are a couple of good performances here, too, from Charlotte Randle as a bungling rookie cop and particularly from David Tennant as Jeff, an easy-going security guard working in a Manhattan apartment block. Jeff winningly admits that he lacks any forte, and his unzipped mouth lets so many cats out of the bag that the lobby begins to resemble a zoo.
But it takes until the scene before the interval for the play to get into its stride. Lonergan spends an age setting up the relationship between Jeff and his upstanding superior William, a man who wants to do the right thing but finds his law-abiding sense of morality tested when his brother is arrested and asks him to provide an alibi. The stakes are raised when Dawn, the young cop Jeff fancies, walks in. She is horrified and humiliated to discover that Bill, the partner for whom she holds a torch, is a lying, whoring, corrupt bully.
The difference between trying to be good and actually being good is amply demonstrated, as the characters' best intentions are derailed not just by external events but also by their own unacknowledged impulses and family histories. Lonergan's play certainly raises the level of debate in the West End, but while it offers its fair share of Shavian wit, it also offers a fair amount of Shavian stodge. More comedy and less of the pulpit would help no end.
Mark Brokaw's slow production should take a lot of the blame: it never finds either rhythm or a lightness of touch. It may yet improve. For the moment the real thing to savour is Tennant's Jeff, goofily struggling with his conscience and his wide-open mouth, and doomed to be the guy in the lobby for ever.
· Until August 17. Box office: 020-7369 1761.
