Engaged, Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond

Gilbert without Sullivan just blathers

Cheviot Hill, the main character of W S Gilbert's 1877 play, is what nowadays would be called a sex pest, indeed an urgent case for treatment at the sort of clinic attended by libidinous celebrities. Seeing a comely female, he is overcome with the urge to put his arms around her waist, to take her in his arms and kiss her. The CFs are far too self-possessed to emit Victorian screams; they all know they are beautiful and therefore must expect such attentions. And, as one of them says, "What harm is there in kissing?"

At that point, however, a firm line is drawn – Cheviot considers kissing, on however short an acquaintance, as inseparable from matrimony, as did Barbara Cartland. In no time he has racked up three fiancées – including one who does not know his name, and whom he may have married without realising it. When they all finally meet, Cheviot must downsize. This is difficult. As he plaintively says, "I never loved three girls as I love these three."

Given Gilbert's reputation, one might expect, as a Punch writer of the time might put it, a merry comedy of marital mix-ups. Yet what it shows instead is how lucky Gilbert was to meet Sullivan (their first hit, Trial by Jury, had opened two years before). Engaged has a number of lines that anticipate Wilde and Wodehouse. The fiancée parted from Cheviot before learning his identity tells her friend she is lucky to know her own future husband's name; of course she knows it, says the friend – "It's on all his pocket handkerchiefs."

Judging from this play, though, Gilbert must have had as many people telling him he was clever as David Hare or Stephen Fry. The few good jokes are worked until they die of exhaustion, and are in any case not strong enough to keep us laughing through the many bad ones. From satire of romance and hypocrisy – a girl tells her poor suitor, "I love you with an imperishable ardour that mocks the power of words" but "business is business" – Gilbert descends to children's-party foolishness. One character, for instance, can make Cheviot behave merely with a mesmeric glance ("Those eyes! Those eyes!"), and the humour of much of the dialogue lies simply in its verbosity. If you don't think big words are intrinsically funny, there's not much to enjoy in a play whose central situation is never developed, merely repeated.

Tim Carroll's production, though, contains several attractive performers, including Caitlin Mottram and Claire Redcliffe as, respectively, the business-minded fiancée and a simple Scottish lassie who sees nothing wrong with Cheviot paying off her previous betrothed ("Twa poond is two poond"). Andrew Bone, as the rejected lover, brings delicate but genuine tenderness to such lines as "The line is blocked, your parasol is broken, and your butterscotch trampled in the dust." Paul Chahidi (Cheviot) almost holds everything together with his crispness and authority, though he lacks the eccentricity that such a part demands. But how everyone does blather on! It just shows what the discipline of writing a song lyric can do – there Gilbert produced fewer words and more wit.

To 11 January (020-8940 3633)