Steven Berkoff will be 70 this year, and age is clearly mellowing the man who was once British theatre's enfant terrible. Sit and Shiver is a feeble Jewish family sitcom that is as undemanding as a soft-boiled egg served with bread soldiers. The title is an emotionally accurate mishearing of the Jewish custom of "sitting Shiva", in which family and friends sit around for a week remembering the recently deceased - in this case an East End tailor called Monty.
Monty, according to his overexcitable daughter Debby, was a veritable saint. The rules of this kind of melodrama are extremely strict: inevitably, this opinion must be proved false by the arrival of a mysterious stranger. JB Priestley never had a problem getting his stranger to arrive at just the right moment to achieve maximum dramatic tension, but Berkoff's stranger is so delayed that by the time she makes her post-interval entrance the play has become limp with the exhaustion of maintaining the endless cackle about flatulence and where to buy a cheesecake. Everyone shouts, and when they are not shouting they are contorting their bodies into expressionistic poses. It is like watching an arty cartoon with the volume up high.
It is harmless enough entertainment, but would have much more bite if Berkoff did not treat his neurotic characters with so much sentimentality or hammer home the message that we must all love each other because we are are all human beings - even the shiksas.
· Until February 18. Box office: 020-8985 2424.
