A cautionary tale

"Funny how much can happen in one night," muses one character on being interrogated by the police after a night of excess. And, one might add, in the course of one play.

Warren Bacci's writing debut - he also produces and stars - features male rape, murder, coming out, and drugs and sex aplenty.

Yet it turns out to be a cross between one of those creaky old stage thrillers where the clues thud with the subtlety of Scud missiles and the hedonism of Shopping and F***ing as two strands of plotting merge at a nightclub.

The virginal and closeted Chris (Bacci) is up for a night of revelry with his football team-mate, the sexually curious Kenny; meanwhile, coked-up sisters Jude and Kelly (an amusingly dislocated Andi Osho) have dragged half-sister Sarah for a night on the tiles.

After much pill-popping and pulling, there is a dead body in the alley outside and Chris has been raped. Add to all this some clumsy discourse on gay themes and Chris's struggle to come out, and you have a play that covers an awful lot of uneven ground.

Perhaps too much. As a result, the issues come across like a simplistic cautionary tale for adolescents, and characters are shockingly clichéd - tarty slapper with a braying laugh, macho, homophobic footballer, camp queen, predatory gay drug dealer (a convincing Adam Lee in a truly repellent role).

It is not helped by Elgiva Field's distracting, messy direction. Scenes lack focus and the show's humour - there are one or two fine oneliners - often clunks at inappropriate moments (in this genre only the likes of Jonathan Harvey can make comedy crunch into tragedy effectively).

One ought to commend Bacci's first effort, which played at the Courtyard Theatre last year, for its ambition. He has certainly taken on a lot here, but his preposterous denouement just beggars belief.

Until 19 April. Information: 020 7609 1800.