Troubled Talent in a fix

She's an aspiring singing star in a northern England seedy amateur talent contest in the late 1970s.

"That's going back a bit," retorts Maureen (Vikki Stone), her long-suffering assistant.

Comedian Victoria Wood, the play's author, knows a thing or two about talent shows. She got her first break after winning the ITV show New Faces at just 20 years of age.

John Plews's well-staged and extremely well-executed production drifts at times due to the lack of dramatic content in the writing.

It has a rather thin plot. Office worker Julie is desperate to win the talent spot, hoping to be discovered and thus give up her boring day job.

However, when she realises that the contest is fixed and that she is required to display her goods via the casting couch, she becomes disillusioned and rebels.

The banter between Julie and Maureen is occasionally hilarious. Maureen is a curious mix of innocence and knowingness and one can see the germ of the Victoria Wood/Julie Walters double act.

They are interrupted on occasion by comedy magic act "George and Arthur" (Harry Dickman and John Waters), who are brought on to "entertain the troops."

The lecherous compere Max and organist Mel are both well-performed by Charlie Carter and the songs are expertly handled.

At times, the production is more like a revue with songs and routines and its antithesis would be Trevor Griffith's hard-hitting piece The Comedians, also written in the 1970s.

Perhaps this piece should be entered in the BBC White Working Class season as it can now be seen with sad irony as a chronicle of the loss of a Northern proletarian culture.

Plays until April 6. Box office: (020) 8340-3488.

JACK COURTNEY O'CONNOR