Plays, like animals entering the ark, often come in pairs. First this week we had Blackbird in which a woman pursues the man who seduced her when she was 12. Now we have Southwark Fair in which a man encounters the drama director who had sex with him when he was 14. But, far from being a study of paedophilia, Samuel Adamson's new play is a blithe, surprisingly cheerful comedy about the metropolitan merry-go-round.
Adamson's setting is louchely trendy Southwark. The action revolves around a lunchtime reunion between 32-year-old Simon and 38-year-old Patrick who shagged him during the interval of a summer school Midsummer Night's Dream: the only problem is that Patrick is expecting to meet his ex-Lysander rather than his old Puck. But that is only one of a series of bizarre happenings during a lunatic day. A young Canadian waiter is jilted by his lover who happens to be deputy mayor. An Adelaide traveller pairs off with Patrick's grunge rock wife. A batty old actor goes in frantic pursuit of her parrot-decorated hat.
I suspect Adamson's aim is to show that urban Southwark is a modern counterpart of Shakespeare's Athenian wood: a place of liberating magic and unexpected meetings. But there are times when he overdoes the eccentricity. It is not enough for Patrick's wife to be equipped with a false arm: she also has to sport Brando's boxing glove from On The Waterfront. And May, the old actor, variously fantasises about being cast as Eleanor Marx and William Morris's daughter. There's also a saggy point in the second act where Adamson, tracking back in time, literally loses the plot.
In the end, however, the play is more a hymn to London than a study of sexual damage. And Nicholas Hytner's buoyant Cottesloe production contains a host of good performances. Rory Kinnear's Simon wittily shows a screwed-up life is compatible with a sharp tongue. Margaret Tyzack's May looks like a bag-lady encased in dreams. And Michael Legge's waiter, vengefully gobbing into a customer's coffee, and Con O'Neill's Patrick, permanently scouting for boys, are both rivetingly plausible. Maybe Southwark life is not quite as cheery as Adamson suggests. But he has created an airy metropolitan fantasy in which every Jack ends up, if not with Jill, at least with a suitable male partner.
· Until June 10. Box office: 020-7452 3000.
