Julie Burchill is Away, Soho Theatre, London

Faded flowers for Julie, Marxism's princess of pop

When Jackie Clune last played London, I saw her for the first time and wondered how, with such feeble, wet material, she had won popularity and a reputation for outrage.

Hearing that she was going to impersonate Julie Burchill, I thought that, while the target was an obvious one, she ought to get some fun out of sending up Marxism's pop princess.

I thought wrong. Clune, and the writer, Tim Fountain, share Burchill's high opinion of herself, and this evening is just another chance to heap flowers at her feet.

Those flowers are rather faded by now. Once again, we hear of the lower-class Bristol background, the adored father, the triumph at the NME and The Sunday Times that made the world pause and stare: "It was unheard of in those days to go from the pop press straight to Fleet Street.''

Again she brags of having taken enough cocaine "to stun the entire Colombian Armed Forces,'' sloughs off her five abortions (they are represented, she says, by the five naked Kewpie dolls in her window), snipes at her ex-husband Tony Parsons, and smirks about her boyfriend's sexual stamina and enthusiasm.

Though stage direction says that, as the play opens, "Julie is laid on the sofa,'' the last remains, fortunately, something for which we take her word.

Clune does a good job of reproducing Burchill's accent (disingenuous rustic child), but seems to be concentrating more on that than on forcefully projecting a character or establishing a rapport with the audience. In Jonathan Lloyd's limp production, Clune spends a lot of time clutching a pillow to her stomach or looking winsomely, Diana-style, at the floor. When this Julie Burchill has to show an emotion other than scorn or self-love, she becomes a very sad bunny indeed, admitting, when she talks about walking out on both ex-husbands, "I'm not particularly proud of this." Not particularly proud? One would have thought rough, tough, Julie Burchill would despise such a cant phrase on a par with "I want to get on with my life''.

Fountain, however, isn't interested in going past what Burchill wants us to know about her. She never says anything ambiguous or damning, and the criticisms she quotes are made by people she can dismiss with a wisecrack. Thus she never has to explain why, if she was as happy as she claims, she took drugs, or why, if she's such a committed socialist, she measures success in financial and materialistic terms – telling us, for instance, how much money she's spent on legal fees to convince us she really wanted custody of her second child.

While this Julie Burchill talks, her editor at The Guardian keeps calling and pleading for the column she has yet to write. In real life, though, Burchill writes so many advertisements for herself she doesn't need to subcontract any more.