Butley

***

One can only hope that the late Simon Gray’s students fared better than the fictional ones assigned to tutorials with his alter ego, Ben Butley, in this caustic 40 year old comedy.

Sharp of tongue, slovenly of dress, Butley’s life is falling apart in a lazy miasma of whisky, cigarettes and fracturing relationships sabotaged by his distorted notion of having “fun”. In odd socks purloined from his gay protégé and housemate (Martin Hutson), The Wire’s Dominic West’s rumpled, probably bi-sexual academic disparages his colleagues, his estranged wife, homosexuals, the undergraduates he despises.

You wouldn’t want to share your life with him, and the play shows its age. But for a couple of hours or so, the deliberately offensive bluster of this lonely, self-destructive man makes for watchable, if wordy, entertainment.

Duchess, Catherine Street, WC2B 5LA (0844 412 4659)Tube: Covent Garden/ Charing Cross butleyLondon.com Until August 27 (£26 -£49.50)