Sugar and not so nice

There could hardly be a play more up to the moment than The Sugar Syndrome. This dark, distinctly amusing comedy by young Lucy Prebble delves into the twilight world of internet chatrooms, where paedophiles pass themselves off as teenagers to try to arrange meetings.

Miss Prebble's intentions are serious, but her droll, dry humour keeps breaking through and taking over. For the chatrooms in the Sugar Syndrome are soon forgotten.

They only serve as the escapist resort of the recovering, anorexic heroine, Dani whose opposing aspects of vulnerability and sophisticated mockery are captured in Stephanie Leonidas's adorable, waif-like performance. And Marianne Elliot's production, although hampered by Jonathan Elsom's ponderous, ugly design - which primarily consists of a redundant, mobile wall - catches the right, light mood.

Prebble's characteristic tone of sexual and mischeivous jocularity is revealed in the first moments of gay abandon, when a meeting in cyberspace almost at once becomes an actual encounter in the flesh. The dialogue sparks and sparkles.

Hardly has the disturbed and bored 17-year-old Dani met geeky, 22-year-old Lewis (Will Ash) on the net than she daringly turns up in his bedroom and almost at once brings him to the brink of premature ejaculation, at which point there is no stopping him - or controlling her boredom.

More to Dani's playful taste, is her second transfer from cyberspace to raw reality. Masquerading as an 11-year-old boy, she attracts the attention of Tim, a 30-something gay paedophile and sacked classics teacher, lately released from prison. It is disappointment at first sight for him. Their subsequent, not very plausible friendship, which too easily ignores the fact that Dani is the wrong gender and age, depends upon the girl's eagerness to help a fellow outsider.

For Dani, with an absent, adulterous father and a hilariously self-pitying mother (Kate Duchene), who is treated by her daughter like a silly, unworldly juvenile, lacks either happiness or security.

Andrew Woodall powerfully conveys Tim's anger and anguish as well as his humour, though Dani's late discovery of the shocking nature of Tim's perversion - thanks to his telltale computer - strikes a false, melodramatic note and underscores the fact that the plot-lines of the Sugar Syndrome waver and trail. But this promising author's comic touch is unerring.

Until 15 November. Information: 020 7565 5000.

The Sugar Syndrome