Louise Brooks was the silent movie star whose remarkable performance as Lulu in the 1929 film Pandora's Box launched a million erotic fantasies - including those of Kenneth Tynan, the former Observer theatre critic and literary manager of the National Theatre, and the first man to say "fuck" on TV.
They were both the kind of people who enjoyed taking others' breath away. Yet both end up fighting for breath here.
In this flimsy play Janet Munsil links the fact that both of them died of emphysema with the 1979 New Yorker profile of Brooks, The Girl in the Black Helmet, written by Tynan.
He spent three days researching the article, holed up with the ageing, arthritic and reclusive film star who had not made a movie for over 40 years.
Munsil's drama speculates on what might have happened. Unfortunately, it is only marginally more interesting than flicking through the pages of an ancient Hello magazine.
The air is thick with Brooks and Tynan "dahling" each other; it evokes a cloak of glamour like a moth-eaten old fur stole, but little more.
The beady Brooks emerges as the stronger character, a woman who takes on the world (or turns her back on it) entirely on her own terms. Tynan is more haunted by the thought of posterity, the horror of the "useless, wasted" life, and the fear that all he might be remembered for was that TV utterance. With good reason.
Brooks after all has assured herself a place as a screen icon; Tynan's stock has fallen dramatically since his death.
The play is slackly structured, if tautly directed by David Giles. The scenes in which we see Tynan's mental projection of Lulu done up like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz or a dancer from the Ziegfeld Follies are a mistake.
It is perhaps worth seeing for Peter Eyre's exquisitely wistful performance and for the clips from Pandora's Box.
· Until March 30. Box office: 020-7478 0100.
