Sexual Perversity in Chicago/ The Shawl, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield

Dan and Bernie are sitting on the beach. A gorgeous girl appears, to whom they call the usual compliments. She passes by, unheeding. There's a moment's silence, and Dan says, "Probably deaf". "Yeah,'' says Bernie. "Deaf bitch.''

You are not likely to get a neater summation of male vanity, childishness and aggression (OK, Jewish-American lower-middle-class male, if that makes you happier) than David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago. The main joke is that Bernie's lament, "Nobody does it normally any more", applies not only to the bizarre encounter he has just described to his friend – he claims to have met a girl who wanted to re-create the Second World War in her bedroom – but to his and Dan's sex lives.

Rating every young woman they meet on the basis of tits, arse and availability, these two behave in a way that, while normal enough among cave-dwellers, is perverse indeed in a supposedly civilised society.

The play's other joke is that, despite Dan's and Bernie's ferocious assertions of manliness, their most intense relation is not with any woman but with each other. Sex is not an end but a means through which the two men confirm their friendship. When Dan introduces his friend to a girl with whom he's getting serious, Bernie's manner is a predictable blend of crude flattery and barely repressed hostility.

Mamet shows us Dan and Bernie – and Dan's girlfriend and her flatmate – in a series of blackout sketches. Most of these take the form of a slam- bang verbal dust-up, a few – usually those between the women – more reflective. The raw language and gamey topics don't shock as they did in 1975, but the uncertainty about whether a scene will end on a punchline or up in the air, still keeps us on edge.

Sexual Perversity is often revived, but you're not likely to see a better production than Angus Jackson's, whose actors combine superb timing with feral sharpness and much better American accents than in the pricier Royal Family. Good as Alan Westaway and Charlotte Randle are as the softer-hearted couple, Dominic Rowan and Nicola Walker are even better as Bernard and a divorcee he unwisely tries to pick up. "Forgive me if I'm being too personal," she tells him, "but I do not find you sexually attractive." Looking like a man who can't believe that his cigar has just exploded, Bernard says, "Is that a new kind of line?".

The performances in The Shawl, another early Mamet piece, are less showy but equally fine, the play having been expertly paced. Keeping us unsure whether his hesitancy represents weakness or deception, Michael Pennington is mesmerising as the crooked but wistful clairvoyant. Though he has nearly all the lines, Teresa Banham and Jamie Glover still manage to make strong impressions as his nervous client and his restless young lover.

So – exceptionally well done. But are they really worth doing? These acrid comedies evoke a dark corner of America, but their meanness of spirit is too often taken as a profound vision. One wonders how long theatres will continue to revive a playwright as narrow, nasty and, ultimately, as minor as David Mamet.

To 24 Nov (0114-249 6000)