In a Chelsea boarding house during the inter-war years, a group of young bohemians and would-be artists are looking for love and happiness under the eccentrically benign eye of their slovenly landlady, Vera. Vera's daughter Jenny wants to write a book, although she hasn't even been kissed properly; her other daughter, Esther, is an activist for left-wing causes who weeps whenever she reads anything about the horrors of the first world war. Unsuccessful novelist Val is hopelessly in love with Esther, while Freda, a bit-part film actress, is dissatisfied with her life, and Laura and Jimmy are so bound up with each other that Laura fears their fragile happiness cannot last.
Written in 1932 by Rodney Ackland, a playwright whose work was largely forgotten until the Orange Tree revived his minor masterpiece Absolute Hell in the late 1980s, Strange Orchestra is a fascinating portrait of a generation fighting demons as they gaily dance the night away. They are absurd, attractive, brightly coloured butterflies about to be pinned down by the coming conflict in Europe. In the secret places in their hearts, they know it, too. Amid the laughter, the melodrama and hysteria, this is a play with a terrible, almost frightening undertow of sadness and helplessness.
Only you wouldn't really know it from this inadequate and unevenly cast production that subsumes the subtleties of the text to the surface comedy, so that much of the play comes over as a bit of flapper froth with added-on personal tragedy. It is always enjoyable but entirely forgettable, whereas a good production would be unforgettable in the way it would have the laughter dying on your lips.
Some of the acting is bad, most of it is ordinary and a little is very good - notably Ishia Bennison, who cleverly doesn't overplay Vera, a student of human nature with an admirably unsentimental attitude to her children, and Louise Bolton, whose Laura shows a young woman who would prefer to destroy herself rather than let happiness slip away.
· Until March 20. Box office: 020-8940 3633.
