Ragmen back with junk

February is about the cruellest month of the year for the West End stage. Audience figures slump. Desperate producers bring in shows which should have had the decency to expire en route to London.

Steptoe and Son in Murder at Oil Drum Lane duly offers an unamusing attempt to raise a play from the ashes of that lovely 1960s BBC comedy series: rag-and-bone men Albert and Harold symbiotically caught in a father-son, love-hatred bond.

These born-again Steptoes give rise to chronic nostalgia and little else. Even I relished the familiar cry of "You dirty old man," delivered by Jake Nightingale's Harold to Harry Dickman's Albert.

Both of them are highly convincing impersonators of the TV actors, Harry H Corbett and Wilfred Brambell. Nightingale's botched, adenoidal attempts at poshness and the hunched Dickman's croaky leer of a voice are delightful.

Yet in this York Theatre production little of the Steptoe humour and inventiveness survives. Weak, revue-like sequences trace the fractious father-son relationship from Harold's 1930s boyhood to his own old age.

Nobody's pleasure will be spoiled if I reveal the first scene lets you into the secret posed by the title and offers an answer. The Steptoes' home has, ridiculously, become a National Trust property which designer Nigel Hook packs with tacky bric-à-brac.

Harold has long since murdered Albert, fulfilling his eternal threat "I'll kill you, I will, I'll kill you", but managed to escape en route to Broadmoor. An unbelievably young-looking man who appears at the property proves to be Harold himself, come home after years of lying low in Brazil and determined to clear his ruined name.

Who, though, should turn up to thwart this effort but the limbo-like ghost of Albert himself ? As in the TV series Albert tricks and schemes outrageously to ensure Harold remains tied to his father's dirty heels. He ruins every chance of the son finding sex, love or marriage.

The script, written by Steptoe's co-creator Ray Galton with John Antrobus, drags in Hitler's British ambassador in Britain and a fracas over the sale of the young Harold.

It relies upon silly, farcical outrageousness rather than the inventive black comedy and the psychological sharpness of the original Steptoe. Roger Smith's production never disguises the desperate, contrived and unfunny nature of Galton and Antrobus's misbegotten script.

Until 22 April. Information: 0870 060 6637.

Steptoe And Son In Murder At Oil Drum Lane