Our House, Cambridge Theatre, London <br></br>Home and Beauty, Lyric, Shaftesbury, London <br></br>The Price, Tricycle, London <br></br>Festen, Sadler's Wells, London

A demolition job by any other name. This ain't Madness, it's a right royal mess

It's Madness. Yes, the ska band of larky skinheads from north London are making a comeback in the West End. Twenty-odd years after they first stormed the charts, their peppy and punchy anthems have been worked into a new musical entitled Our House. If you were an adolescent in the Eighties, as I was, numbers like "Baggy Trousers" and "House Of Fun" may well still make you want to dance dementedly. This, of course, entails collectively squishing into a conga-style line and jerking around like rusty automatons. The question is, wouldn't we rather be doing this at home with the curtains drawn?

To its credit, Our House avoids several pitfalls. It isn't a self-regarding bio-musical charting the rise and fall of Madness. Indeed Suggs and his gang, as associate producers, don't appear at all. Director Matthew Warchus's cast are mostly energetic young unknowns, Peter Darling's choreography is refreshingly freewheeling, and the writer Tim "Preston Front" Firth has invented a romantic storyline around the songs. That narrative approach proved a winner for the Abba musical, Mamma Mia!

In fact, Firth offers two alternative storylines, like parallel universes. Joe Casey (small, scruffy Michael Jibson) is a comprehensive school kid from Camden Town who's sometimes tempted to follow in his dad's criminal footsteps. Joe's sweetheart, Sarah (wholesome Julia Gay), urges him to avoid that slippery slope then goes on to university and becomes a respectable lawyer. Meanwhile we see our hero making different life choices. He joins the lucre-making bad boys in one version of events, but in an another he struggles to be a good citizen in the face of social injustice and a developer who's demolishing the terrace where Joe's mum lives.

Unfortunately, nobody's performance is outstanding, even if Gay is an assured, affable newcomer. Warchus and Firth have damaged their artistic credentials here, while probably making a fast buck. The set is ugly, fussy and inconsistent with spinning black and white brick walls and film projection lobbed in when Joe and co head out of town – an obvious excuse for "Driving in My Car" plus a mini-burlesque of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Rob Howell's costumes also fudge the era irksomely, with shell suits rubbing shoulders with 1950s pinafores.

On top of this Firth's hectic opening scenes depicting nervous condom-buying on Joe's 16th birthday are thoroughly unbelievable and sub-Grange Hill. Madness's thirtysomething fans will surely have limited fun here. There are a couple of new songs, including a heavily moralising chorus from the ghost of Joe's dreary dad (Ian Reddington). I didn't exactly feel moved to sing along to "The simple equation of wrong versus right/ The simple equation of black versus white/ See where the paths lead in the long run/ Which to the darkness, which into sun." Suggs, this sucks.

One might exclaim, "Whose house is it anyway?" watching Home and Beauty. For in Somerset Maugham's 1918 farce, Victoria is an outrageously shallow, preening Society belle who finds herself with two husbands. Pukka William Cardew – who is spouse No 1, presumed dead – suddenly returns from the war to find his chum, Freddy Lowndes, has got more than a foot in the door.

Basically, this is no more than an entertaining bit of fluff, with two intervals padding out three short acts. Maugham does have a satirical swipe at the hypocrisies rife in respectable households since all three protagonists – behind their displays of ardent devotion – are frightfully keen on untying the knot. Home And Beauty is, moreover, alert to WWI's shake-up of society. Everyone's best friend is the bustling divorce solicitor, the servants have become decidedly uppity, and our two gents end up in the kitchen labouring over a hot stove with, maybe, a hint of gay companionship.

Christopher Luscombe's production could have felt creaky with its lavish period sets – starting with Victoria's cloying pink, frilly boudoir. However, the fast-paced acting feels zanily modern, if occasionally relentless. Playing Freddy, the telly presenter-turned-actor Jamie Theakston can't quite keep up and sometimes looks self-consciously giggly. But he's not bad and the comedian Alexander Armstrong (from The Armstrong and Miller Show) makes William a vigorously absurd, bluff twerp. With characteristic aplomb, Victoria Hamilton is ludicrous as Victoria, melodramatically flinging herself to the ground with husky cries of woe whenever she's in a tight spot.

Two rival brothers meet after years of separation in Arthur Miller's 1968 American classic, The Price. The assumption is Victor and Walter are going to fight over their late father's stockpiled antiques in their family home which is about to be knocked down (for all I know, by the property tycoon from Camden). Victor's wife, Esther, is pushing for a high offer from Solomon, the shabby dealer whom Victor has summoned for an estimate. But the argument turns to moral values because Walter, as a young man, headed off to college and a lucrative career while Victor stayed home to look after his father who was – supposedly – chronically depressed after losing his fortune in the crash of 1929.

Miller's firm, almost architectonic structuring has stood the test of time impressively. Just occasionally a speech drags or sounds obtrusively like the author philosophising. That aside, the siblings' divergent accounts of their actions and motivations gradually destabilises all one's trust in the way we conceive and retell our own histories. This is both unnerving and thought-provoking.

Sean Holmes' excellent production – which deserves to transfer to the West End from the Tricycle – is eerie and surprisingly amusing. Anthony Lamble's attic setting, cluttered with dusty wardrobes, is subtly spooky. Larry Lamb as Victor has a perfect American cop's slouch (which is the job Victor's taken up). Sian Thomas's Esther is contrastingly brittle and Des McAleer's anger snowballs slowly. Meanwhile Warren Mitchell is on great form as old Solomon, shuffling around like a cranky and lovable or possibly conniving gnome.

Worse memories will out in Festen, where a grand family reunion for a patriarch's 60th birthday turns into a nightmare. One son – a deeply disturbed soul called Christian – makes a dinner speech formally accusing his father of sexually abusing him as a child. What looks like the Last Supper ends up more like the Day Of Judgement, possibly with implied political allegories about long-buried atrocities.

Adapted from Thomas Vinterberg's Danish film, this acclaimed Polish staging visited London for four days this week – presented by Lift with English surtitles. Directed by H7 (a pseudonym for Grzegorz Jarzyna rather than a chemical phenomenon), this avant-garde production was spatially startling, panoramically vast. The black-tie banquet where civilities were to break down was in the middle-distance, towards the back of Sadler's Wells's huge stage. Yet each character – along with every glittering wine glass – was sharply illuminated. Other bedroom scenes played simultaneously, in different areas, while the actors slipped between intense naturalism, feral squawks and melancholy frozen silences. Ultimately though, the plot rambled excessively and this production seemed more handsome than harrowing. A mite disappointing.

k.bassett@independent.co.uk

'Our House': Cambridge Theatre, London WC2 (020 7494 5399), booking to 1 March; 'Home And Beauty': Lyric Theatre, London W1 (0870 890 1107), booking to 1 March; 'The Price': Tricycle Theatre, London NW6 (020 7328 1000), to 7 December