Writing keeps the audience sweet

This could have been a prim sermon. Elizabeth Kuti's play is that unfashionable thing, a worthy historical drama, that takes place among the Quaker community in 1840s Dublin.

Hannah and Samuel Tewkley, a childless, prosperous couple, live in 'a mansion of plainness' built on the tea and sugar trade. Slightly in love with suffering, the well-intentioned Hannah philanthropically works with the city's poor to assuage her guilt over her merchant husband's wealth.

And all is well, more or less, until the couple invite freed slave, Sarah Worth, played by Susan Salmon, on an abolitionist lecture tour into their home. The Sugar Wife keeps our allegiances shifting between the Tewkleys, the lecturer and her freethinking companion, as each character's illusions about their own goodness are peeled away and their moral compromises and hypocrisies revealed. No one is pure and 'nothing is done without desire'.

The play packs a lot in - at times you can feel the labour behind it. But, after a slightly starched first half, Kuti's writing comes into its own, digging deeply into themes of charity, sexual politics and colonialism. But the piece could have been better served by Lynne Parker's production.

The acting doesn't feel lived-in and the huge set of drawers in Paul Keogan's plain, pine set should hint at secrets, but only suggests, well, furniture. Still, this is ample stuff, finding room for every one of its bruised characters as they grope towards honesty and change.

Until Feb 11, Soho Theatre And Writers Centre, 21 Dean Street W1, Mon to Sat 7.30pm, Sat mats 3pm, £15 to £20, £12.50 to £15 concs, mats £7.50. Tel: 0870 429 6883. www.sohotheatre.com Tube: Tottenham Court Road/Piccadilly Circus

The Sugar Wife