It is London in the mid-1990s. A callow estate agent, Rosie, is smilingly pointing out the advantages of a £1m penthouse flat overlooking the Houses of Parliament to a burly, menacing man with a Russian accent. The fact that he doesn't seem the slightest bit interested in the well-appointed kitchen, calls himself PG Wodehouse, has an associate called Ernest Hemingway and has the million available in cash in a suitcase doesn't seem to worry Rosie, who is eager to make her first sale.

It doesn't seem to worry the flat's owner, Axel Vincent, either. He is a successful Jeffrey Archer-style novelist with an ambitious wife in John Major's government. Her hopes of a cabinet post have been dashed by her husband's brushes with scandal and his penchant for gambling. He is now desperate for the million to stave off his gambling debts, and if that comes courtesy of the Russian mafia he doesn't care.

Tony Bicat's play is quite as lame as its outline sounds. Its tenuous grasp on reality is quickly swept away by an increasingly farcical scenario that includes vodka, coffin-sized crates, the pulling of guns and murder. It is drearily predictable even down to its late-coming serious strand, which brings in the conflicts of the past decade and sees Ernest Hemingway make a bid for freedom, a move that will inevitability end in his death.

The most interesting aspect of the play is underdeveloped: the innocence and ignorance of nice, middle-class Rosie and silly, grasping Axel, who both behave as if the world were run along the lines of a gentlemanly game of English cricket. Although, as PG Wodehouse points out, those rules are crooked, too: when the British want to flog a few submarines to the third world they just throw in a hospital to make sure the deal goes through.

Gemma Bodinetz's production bobs along like a pleasant sitcom, and the acting is excellent. But director and cast are wasted on a play that carelessly throws credibility to the winds in search of an easy laugh.

· Until May 4. Box office: 020-7610 4224.