The middle-aged man who becomes a 22-year-old baseball star soon discovers he misses the wife he always ignored when the sport was on TV. Credit for this naturally goes to director Carol Metcalfe and her buoyant cast, which includes two sock-it-to-'em performances from Peter Gale as a snazzily showbiz devil and Liz Izen as his endearingly vampy sidekick, as well as an attractively benign one from Daniel Brown as the fazed baseball star. Damn Yankees takes an old tale - the Faust legend - and gives it the comic contemporary setting of American baseball. Far from dating, a musical such as this - set in a Fifties America that probably never existed outside of musical comedy - acquires a glow of Arcadian innocence.What's cheering about Damn Yankees, considering that the original Broadway show employed the legendary talents of director George Abbott and choreographer Bob Fosse, is that it still works very well in the reduced circumstances of a fringe revival. Watching a revival of Richard Adler and Jerry Ross's musical, 40 years later, it is not hard to see why. There's a lovely understated performance, too, from John Simm as the skinny, smiley one, quietly getting on with the business of getting off with Webb's ex-girlfriend; and, in his neatly ironed shirts and Persil-white trainers, Neil Stuke is outstanding as his pugnacious half-brother.When Damn Yankees opened on Broadway in 1955 it won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical. These very funny, quirky exchanges flare up at random and reveal more about the characters' preoccupations than the under-dramatised confessional speeches that tend to be given to the women.

Simon Bent, it seems, is best at writing snappy dialogue for straight young men Here, he is very well served by the performances. Danny Webb has the showiest role, which he seizes with indecent relish, raunchily spraying beer foam, hugging and kissing the other men, and demanding sex from his ex-girlfriend with the impatient manner of someone looking for the car keys. we won't recognise ourselves." The subtext here has less to do with John's intimations of the future, and more to do with the author nudging us and saying, "Hey, this is a bit like Chekhov".And it's not really. The first line spoken by Reg (Neil Stuke) is a classic of the genre: "Don't say it, right - I know what you're going to say, so don't. Don't." The first dispute is over whether he should have bought ketchup or barbecue sauce. Bent has a wonderfully sharp ear for the repetitive, prickly way in which people who live with one another go on and on. Bent spoils it slightly by letting John, the raddled old whinger played with an impressive, grav- elly self-pity by Jack Carr, say lines like: "50 years, 100 years from now ...

But if the play turns out to be less than the sum of its parts, the parts themselves are well worth following. Each character in Bent's play is as original and distinctive as someone you might bump into walking down - well, Goldhawk Road.Taken together it adds up to a depressingly accurate group portrait. Dropping off some dodgy computer software for cash is the closest any of them gets to earning a living. The house accommodates eight people - five men, three women, some related, some not - who are either living here, visiting, or hovering between the two. The house is also part of the relaxed multiple plot-line, as there's a plan to get the father to buy the house off the council, nice and cheaply, so that when he dies the family can sell it at a profit.

Why aren't they watching TV? This is not the Goldhawk Road bought up as first homes by Eighties yuppies No one here has an office job. There's a window in the middle of the back wall that looks out onto the shrubs and rubbish stacked in the yard outside When it rains, water streams down the window pane. Considering what a feckless atmosphere exists inside this house, the only unrealistic note in Paul Miller's intriguingly detailed production is that the characters stand around doing all this talking. The rigorous pursuit of authenticity extends to the off-stage areas. There are more props on show in the partially visible kitchen than there are in the main acting area. Here it is - life on the theatre's very own doorstep! - step in and take a look.