Milking Chekhov

Black Milk, by the young Russian writer Vassily Sigarev, arrives with all the force of a theatrical anti-climax.

Last year, Sigarev secured the Evening Standard's Most Promising Playwright Award for his earlier work Plasticine and was the first non-English speaking writer to win the prize.

That play, whose tense narrative themes were cleverly interwoven, pulsated with vitality, power and anger. It conjured up a young man's nightmare vision of contemporary Russia, beset by violence, vice and social disintegration.

Sigarev's new, appealing comedy of weird manners, stirred by a clash between the values of provincial Russia and reformed Moscow, seems old-fashioned by comparison. The political perspective is fuzzy, even though Sigarev conveys a sharp impression of decaying, deprived, middle Russia, where there's a first-aid post but no hospital, amateur vodkamaking but no cinemas.

Unfortunately, he also paints a fairly conventional, neo-Gogolian and Chekhovian social picture of this dim region, into which a young couple from the capital intrude.

Where better to catch the spirit of such a place than at its railway station? Designer Delia Peel's bare, blank waiting room, with an iron stove, a sleeping drunk and a ticket clerk knitting, is a place where time stopped a century ago.

Then in burst pregnant, twentysomething Poppet, and her yobbish man, Lyovchik, wearing casual, modish clothes. They drag in a pile of huge carrier bags. This capital city duo, stranded until one of the occasional trains arrives next morning, represent the spirit of nasty Russian capitalism.

Well played, with menacing relish by Sarah Cattle and Paul Ready in Simon Usher's vigorous production, they hold the stage. But their yob-speak dialogue strikes false Anglo-centric notes.

Poppet and Lyovchik are small-time hustlers who've palmed off their lousy "wonder-toasters" on simple locals, who duly appear looking like cowed, lost souls from Gogol's lower depths. Sheila Reid, delectably poignant as an old woman with a corpse in her home

and toaster to be rid of and Suzan Sylvester's garrulous ticket clerk are gnarled totems of this isolated world. But in the second half, Sigarev loses his drift. Once Poppet has given birth locally, she's briefly and unbelievably fired by Chekhovian idealism and tries to persuade Lyovchik to help regenerate the region. This engrossing play then fades out in an optimistic, sentimental vision of stars and white milk: unbelievable.

Until 1 March. Box office: 020 7565 5000.

Black Milk: International Playwrights - Focus Russia