A slaphappy double act

Laurence Howarth and Gus Brown are as removed from the traditional slaphappy double act as you can get without ending up with two straight men. Their sketches, written by Radio 4 regular Howarth, are decorous, theatrical, extended affairs, employing ornate language and ambitious scenarios to serve up both chuckles and food for thought.

Men In Love tackles the thorny issue of male dysfunction. A quintet of two-handers portray examples of romantic crossed purposes. In the opening case study the sonnet-spouting, crinkle-haired Howarth has de-elocution lessons to turn him into an "emotionally constipated homunculus" because women really want "an unpromising mess they can turn into their ideal man".

Further scenes expand on the communication-breakdown theme. Two medieval knights endure nine years of ritualistic courtly love duels for no particular reason. In ancient Greece Zeus's son turns his wife into a tree and now fears turning her back in case she leaves him.

The darker material boasts a bitterly funny aftertaste - a skit in which the Griff Rhys Jones-ish Brown plays a stalker who thinks he has the ideal longdistance relationship is comic and faintly disturbing, while a First World War trench spoof in which an officer parades his sexual prowess in front of a doomed, virginal private says much about barely repressed class conflict.

There are laugh-out-loud oneliners too and Howarth has a knack for incorporating naff pop lyrics that Richard Curtis would admire. An idiosyncratic show that demands an intellectual effort from the audience and repays that effort in spades.

Until Saturday. Information: 0870 429 6883.