Theatre

If you don’t like plays about the theatre – apparently such people exist – then look away now. Tony Sportiello’s soft-hearted satire starts from the splendidly improbable premise that a Hollywood talent agency with a washed-up ex-junkie movie actor on its books would turn to a London fringe company to rehabilitate the faded star’s fortunes. In LA, bad boy Jack Morgan ‘can’t even get eaten by a giant lizard’ any more because of his substance-abuse past, so his agent comes up with the brilliant idea of relaunching his career by paying £100,000 to a drama group in north Clapham (how self-referential can you get?) if they give him the lead in their forthcoming show.

With some predictable misgivings about loss of artistic integrity, the company agrees and much amiable fun is had at the expense of overpaid Hollywood narcissists and penurious south London luvvies: Nick (Gil Cohen-Alloro) is a classic neurotic writer, struggling actors Sarah (Cassidy Janson) and Larry (Ronald van Duuren) swap stories about failed auditions and walk-on parts in ‘Hollyoaks’, while bossy fringe director Karen (Chloe Welsh) asserts her authority by telling pampered, petulant Jack (Sean Taylor, pictured): ‘That’s my job. That’s what I don’t get paid for.’ The set-up is sitcom-ish and the humour some miles short of groundbreaking, but, if you can forgive the occasional lurch into earnestness and a terminal outbreak of gross sentimentality, it’s diverting stuff, smartly delivered by a very likeable cast under the direction of Niki Flacks.