Bourgeois blues in Red Russia

Director Declan Donnellan has unearthed an extraordinary example of Russian political satire in the shape of this mocking, madcap farce by Nikolai Erdman. His own chatty, but never crudely modernised translation whizzes exuberantly along.

Indeed, there is far too much of the whizz-bang approach to his slapstick production. Yet there is no missing the play's anarchic individuality.

Erdman's theatrical technique, which involved the mixing of a fierce cocktail of contemporary politics and black comedy, may be faintly reminiscent of Gogol and even of Chekhov. The playwright's extravagant cynicism, at the expense of Russian politics and his unadmirable characters remains, however, all his own.

To think a 1920s Russian dramatist was permitted the freedom to poke scathing fun at Czarists and Communists alike: the iron hand of censorship was restrained in these experimenting years.

The Mandate, premiered in 1925 and performed in 40 theatres the next season, captures the dizzying sense of social dislocation and identity loss that followed the revolutionary end of Czarist Russia and the emergence of a Communist Soviet Republic.

It is no surprise that Erdman's play concerns a bourgeois family in search of workers to pose as their relatives. The plot and plotting starts with a chest that holds a dress belonging to the Czar's own daughter, detours to a man wearing a saucepan and ends with the anti-hero, Pavel, who poses as a Communist, existentially admitting he is "not really anybody".

Between these two points Donnellan charts a boisterous game of deception and bluff, complete with silent-film techniques and in a style whose coarseness obscures darker notes and nuances.

Bruce Alexander's opulent Olymp is plunged into such opportunist panic that he first plans to marry his son to the "Communist's" sister and later to Sinead Matthews' delightfully stupid Cook, posing as the Czar's daughter.

Yet Alexander misses the comedy of desperation. Worse, Deborah Findlay's materfamilias revels solely in grotesquery while Martin Hutson's Pavel remains obstinately bland, even when assuming a Communist identity. Erdman's underlying sense of nightmare seriousness goes missing.

Booking until 15 January. Information: 020 7452 3000.

The Mandate