Over-privileged and over-stoned

Take a Jewish youth (Dennis) who deals in cannabis in early 1980s Manhattan. Stir in his downcast best friend (Warren) who has stolen $15,000 in cash from Daddy. Sprinkle lavishly with one ounce of ill-gotten cocaine, add a dash of eros in the shape of a girl (Jessica) who's wary of sex. Blend all elements vigorously on a low light and serve cool to young audiences keen to swallow any hip American dish: I feel cynical about Kenneth Lonergan's This is Our Youth. I admit it amuses and vividly conveys the dilemma of poor little rich kids, who feel part of the alienated liberal elite in Reagan's conservative America, who lack parental support and drown their sorrows in risky substances and sex. What's more, a friend's sudden death after a night of heroin and cocaine ensures there's no romancing about class A drugs.

There is, however, an air of artful cuteness and contrivance about the linking of Warren's theft, a cocaine marketing ploy that blows up in disaster, and the boys' final desolation when left without girls or money. Maybe we are incited to sympathise overmuch or perhaps, since I've now seen the comedy three times since March, I'm suffering from over-exposure. The first two productions, powerfully led by Hayden Christensen and Matt Damon, were short-lived. Now the producers plan a regular shuttle service of fledgling American film stars to strut their stuff in the play.

Unfortunately Laurence Boswell's latest production bodes ill for this scheme. An ungainly, charmless Colin Hanks, son of Tom, plays the cool, cocky Dennis to the manner unborn and inappropriate. He adopts a tone of hectoring, monotonous rant, so that his ambivalent power-relationship with Kieran Culkin's Warren neither changes nor develops. Culkin, although vocally underpowered and unchanged by loss of virginity, is the production's sad, funny, saving grace. Eyes hooded, hair tumbling over eyes, emotionally withdrawn, he resembles a battered puppy up against a mad master. Only when Alison Lohman's suitably fraught Jessica succumbs to him does happiness at last briefly intrude upon his chronic dejection.

Booking to 23 December. Box office: 020 7494 5085.

This Is Our Youth