The drinker's weakness

Simon Stephens's new play, featuring four men on a miserable Saturday night in an East End last-chance saloon just before Christmas, indulges every vice in the serious drinker's mini-bar.

It's all here, from docility to rage, delusion to disorientation, mirth to mayhem, bravura to cowardice and, eventually, the number one weakness of the drinking classes: good old-fashioned sentimentality.

To some extent it's all jaw-jaw as the foursome sink jar after jar, but a steady stream of foul and intoxicating language keeps you wide awake.

There's also some great drunk acting in Jo McInnes's minutely observed production. Her show runs the gamut of dipsomaniac mannerisms from swaying to wayward articulation.

Bernard Gallagher is the soberest of the bunch as a sweet old Italian barber, while Lee Ross is a young cross between a hammered Robert De Niro and a slurring Tommy Cooper. Meanwhile, Paul Ritter is impeccably addled with lank, sweaty hair as the cellist turned postman with a terrifying sense of humour. And Fred Ridgeway holds the show together as the ex-pat Irish landlord who looks like he's spent the past 25 years with a steaming hangover.

But, even with a hilarious host of walk-on cameos, the final effect is less seedily comic than touchingly sad.

Christmas