In David Hirson's Molière pastiche which, in rhyming couplets, attempts to compare the value of popular and lofty art, Valere (Mark Rylance) is the low-brow entertainer sent by Joanna Lumley's Princess to inject life into the austere work produced by David Hyde Pierce's high-brow dramatist, Elomire.
Hyde Pierce deploys the disdain he so brilliantly developed as Niles in Frasier. and I would pay top rate just to watch Rylance's monumental monologue. But Matthew Warchus's production never quite hits the funny bone, nor does the play's pathos touch the heart.
Still worth seeing, though, for two of the world's greatest comic actors at the top of their game, superbly supported by Lumley. (www.thecomedytheatre.co.uk)