Causing light havoc

Watching Rebecca Lenkiewicz's drama of dysfunctional Irish family life, in which next to nothing happens several times, is like hearing echoes of half a dozen finer, far more impressive plays upon similar Irish themes. Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters exerts a persistent influence too.

Director Lucy Bailey, who scored such a notable hit with her faux-cinematic version of Tennessee Williams's Baby Doll, fails to work any fresh magic in her mildly atmospheric production. Dick Bird's slightly stylised stage-set places several bedrooms, a kitchen and a bar-room in such close proximity that the action sometimes becomes hard to follow.

The Night Season takes place close to Sligo, though for unclear reasons. Here, Judith, Rose and Maud, youngish sisters in their 20s or early 30s, are stranded in the lower depths of sexual disappointment or dissatisfaction, with lives set in drab routine.

Their mother has long since vanished to London for unexplained reasons. The girls' learned cynic of a father ( David Bradley, convincing as ever) is deep in the drink and Annette Crosbie's impressive grandmother loitering gamely at death's door, hankers volubly for a last touch of sex. John Light's blandly handsome young English actor, John Eastman, cast as the poet Yeats in a film on local location, arrives to rent a room and causes far lighter havoc than in Chekov's play.

Lenkiewicz reveals next to nothing about the family's social status. An air of authorial contrivance lingers and renders the love-plots suspect. The three sisters are all so cool, pert, and shrewd, blessed with sharp wit as well, that their sexual isolation seems unlikely.

Why would Susan Lynch's attractive, desolate Judith fail to net Lloyd Hutchinson's dullish, smitten Gary? Why should Justine Mitchell's Rose make Eastman happy in bed almost as soon as he arrives but then lose him so soon? Would a Sligo grandmother be so sexually liberated that she could persuade Eastman to share a blanket and a night with her? Lenkiewicz's characters sound and behave as if colourful figments of the author's imagination.

Until 17 November. Information: 020 7452 3000.

The Night Season