You might think that if you had for many years provided the voice of Homer Simpson to the most consistently funny and smart TV show ever written that you might be able to spot the difference between a great script and a piece of toilet paper. Clearly not if you are Dan Castellaneta.
How to explain Castellaneta's presence in The Bicycle Men, an American theatre comedy show so puerile and unfunny that it makes you doubt the presence of intelligent life forms in that field? Is he doing a misplaced favour to a dying friend? Is someone holding his entire family at gunpoint and making him do it? Did he fancy an all-expenses-paid London trip? These are the more charitable explanations.
Castellaneta plays Steve, a middle-aged American cycling through France, whose bicycle packs up in a small village. Waiting for it to be mended, Steve encounters a series of national stereotypes, including the village mute, the sex-crazed puppeteer and a Fawlty Towers-style restaurateur.
Has anyone involved ever been to France? Perhaps like President Bush they have difficulty finding other countries on the map. It's a kind of theatrical Tour de France, but I was saddle sore after the first 10 minutes and desperately in need of banned substances to endure the relentless toilet humour. Breast and penis jokes abound, and the cast's great achievement is in being both sexist and homophobic while also promoting that smug American attitude that they are the only sensible and sane human beings in a world full of crazy foreigners.
· Until December 2. Box office: 020-7 2261916.
