Sting in the tale

Just because it is a simple truth does not mean that its reiteration is without merit: most people's lives are played out to a changing soundscape of background music. Niall Ashdown's certainly is. For this 39-year-old, Prefab Sprout will always be synonymous with the time he failed to make a move on a girl, and The Police more than anything will remain redolent of youthful longing and burgeoning desire. "Sting looked like a man who'd just had sex," he says simply.

This charmingly whimsical, thematically universal, at one point startlingly emotional and at others frustratingly slight piece is Ashdown's follow-up to his tremendously well received 2001 solo debut, Hungarian Bird Festival. He continues in the same vein here, twining his passion - music now, as opposed to bird-watching last time around - with a surprisingly poignant self-analysis and insight into a peculiarly British suburban family.

Ashdown's is a winningly diffident stage persona, who takes time meticulously positioning a piano in the centre of the bare black stage, takes a tea-break halfway through the show and states from the off that he doesn't like theatre. It comes as no surprise to learn that it is through music that the middle-class teenager dreamed of escaping, and that Sting - whom Ashdown impersonates with uncanny accuracy - remains his hero.

The trouble with the glimpses that Ashdown offers us into his life is they are so fascinating that we long to learn more and fill in some of the blanks, especially after he has recounted with barely concealed emotion the miscarriage that he and his partner suffered. But such comprehensiveness isn't Ashdown's style, although director Emma Rice could have worked with him on sharpening the focus of a couple of sections. Nonetheless, 75 minutes in the company of this unassuming Everyman is time well spent.

Until 11 January. Information: 020 7223 2223.