The Great Extension

'Behind the sofa!? What is this, a fucking pantomime?' Well, yes. There's nothing subtle about this multiculturalism farce, with which Cosh Omar follows up 2004 hit 'Battle of Green Lanes'. It never lets plausibility stand in the way of a good joke. Its characters squabble stubbornly from the most extreme positions imaginable: hedonist with puritan, transsexual with homophobe, Jew with anti-Semite, to cartoonish effect. 'You say Salafi,' says a Sufi Turk to a devout Anglo-Pakistani, 'and we say Wahhabi...Let's call the whole thing off.'

But let's not. Because, while 'The Great Extension' is crass, improbable and creaky, it's also tremendous fun. And in its rambunctious way, it's eloquent about the loveably mongrel nation that is twenty-first-century Britain. Proceedings commence when ladies' man and moneyed layabout Hassan wakes after a drunken night out to find himself married to an orthodox Muslim woman. Cue visits by both families, and by Little Englander neighbour Mr Brown, who's furious about Hassan's proposed extension. Amid the confusion, our host (Omar himself, every inch a Turkish Del Boy) struggles to defend his charmed life from feminine and fundamentalist incursions.

The production (by Kerry Michael) wobbles in and out of a credible farce register. It's sometimes preposterous; and the script could use an edit. But the parallel drawn between marriage and multiculturalism is provocative, and the play teems with irreverent insights into first- and second-generation immigrant life. On this evidence, white, Christian Europe is unlikely to be buried under Islam's extension. Its knockabout sense of fun may be harder to resist.