First the good news: Clare McIntyre, after a long gap, has written a play to kick-start Anthony Clark's Hampstead tenure. The less good news is that she has yoked together two entirely separate themes: false accusation and the problems of marriage to a bisexual partner.
At first all seems clear. Two 15-year-old boys, JJ and Tom, have private maths lessons with a tutor, Brian, who is gay. When JJ accuses Brian of sexually molesting him, the stage seems set for a drama about the ruinous effects of suspicion, on the lines of Philip King's Serious Charge. McIntyre never sufficiently explores JJ's motive and soon reveals that she has another issue seeking attention.
While JJ lives with his promiscuous single mum Anna, it transpires that Tom's seemingly ordinary parents Paul and Jane have been living a lie. For years Jane has endured her husband's bisexuality, but when she learns that Paul has been secretly having an affair with the tutor she joins Anna in attempting to oust the hapless dominie. Suddenly the play turns from a study of adolescent accusation into one about the problems of living with a gay husband.
In attempting to link the two strands McIntyre drives her female characters into a corner. Anna, who is worldly enough to know better, jumps to the rash conclusion that gay teachers are automatically paedophiliac. Meanwhile Jane's liberalism cracks under the strain of a confrontation with one of her husband's lovers. I suspect McIntyre's intention was to show the intolerable pressures women often face: what she actually shows is two mothers succumbing to prejudice and revenge.
For all its intellectual confusion, the play does have good scenes: in the one where Martin Wenner, as the falsely accused teacher, confronts Ben McKay's surly adolescent with his lies, a certain tension is generated.
But although Sally Dexter's Anna radiates sensuality, she has a hard time coping with the character's contradictions. And even if Patrick Connellan's design is full of elegant quadrilaterals, Clark's production fails to impose mathematical order on a thematically divided play.
· Until October 25. Box Office: 020 7722 9301
