Flaking it in Manhattan

Toby Young's shortlived journalistic career at Vanity Fair showed he was not so much a cat among the pigeons as a prat among strutting Manhattan peacocks, doomed to failure both as a writer and as a pioneering transatlantic stud.

The tall, dark, and charismatic Jack Davenport has assumed the task of portraying the bald and rather less charismatic Young, in an evening which details the latter's problems in hiring a stripper, thrusting himself at A-list celebrities, or attempting lesbian dating in six-inch heels and a wig.

Young's book about being a contributing editor at America's most fawned-upon monthly glossy makes the reader conclude that if Young didn't exist, some latter-day Evelyn Waugh would have to invent him.

How To Lose Friends And Alienate People is an excruciating yet often entertaining piece of self-satire, where the author's hapless obsession with boobs, booze and glamour is just balanced by a witty political analysis of New York magazine culture that could easily be digested with a cocktail.

Since Young is shorter than Davenport, it would be wrong to say that the actor rises admirably to the task of portraying his subject - instead he shrinks, no less admirably, with the help of a white shirt that almost swallows his neck.

Writing for the Evening Standard, Young himself happily conceded the absurdity of being portrayed by the debonair star of This Life and The Talented Mr Ripley, and it says much for Davenport's skill that on a sparsely decorated stage, he transforms effortlessly, not only into a nerdishly credible version of Young but into characters including Vanity Fair's thunderingly powerful Canadian editor Graydon Carter and a humourless Manhattan socialite looking for a breast-reduction.

Unfortunately, Davenport's punchy performance does not mean that this is a good piece of theatre, for although Tim Fountain's script cranks out Young's more entertaining perceptions, it feels infuriatingly bitty and very weakly structured. In the past, Fountain has provided potent theatrical re-creations of Quentin Crisp and Julie Burchill, but it seems that Young cannot match the strength of their onstage personalities. His story would translate better to film (as planned) - not least because his focus is on a glamour-obsessed world where the lure of celluloid is only rivalled by the debilitating fear of cellulite.

Maybe the book should not have been adapted at all, since between its covers, good prose has done for Young what good clothes do for the most imperfect of bodies - transformed him from a personality some wouldn't even hold at arm's length, to an individual that most would positively enjoy standing next to at a party. As a smug idiot savant, he is ideal for a media world that loves gazing into its own bejewelled navel - even if his more puerile stunts seem like tarnished fool's gold.

However, on stage that puerile element is often too strong to amuse, let alone impress. Young may be a much needed thorn in the side of certain self-appointed gods of Manhattan journalism, but this will not cause ructions in Conde Nast's wellcoutured heaven.

How To Lose Friends & Alienate People