Sakina's restaurant, Bush Theatre, London

Goodness gracious me

Though my aversion to one-person shows has occasionally been overcome, I think it unlikely that another prejudice will ever be breached. That is my dislike of writers and actors who try to ingratiate themselves before the house lights dim. A few use the programme to relate their hard-luck stories, others express their gratitude to their families, though never with the artfulness of Stephen Potter's recommended dedication for disarming a book reviewer: "To ___, in the hope that God's precious gift of sight may someday be restored to her."

Aasif Mandvi, the author and performer of Sakina's Restaurant, thanks us in his programme note for coming, and shares with us his desire "to write characters from my ethnic background that were real and that had never been seen before on the American stage" and his excitement at opening off-Broadway three years ago: "For me, it was the culmination of a dream." (We are an anti-climax, then.)

Mandvi may be right about the barrenness of the American stage, but his characters – an Indian waiter in New York and his relatives, who own the restaurant – are no strangers to Americans, and certainly not to us. Any episode of The Simpsons featuring Apu, the Hindu grocer, conveys more about Indian attitudes and customs than this show, and it's a good deal funnier. (Bewildered by the question "How are you doing?" the waiter asks, "How am I doing what?" At this, everyone, he says, laughs and laughs and laughs.) And for some time, the fiction of new immigrants to the US such as Amy Tan or Bharati Mukherjee has been dealing with their experiences and evoking comparisons with other cultural types – the resemblance of the possessive, domineering Hindu mother to the Chinese or Jewish one, for instance. There is even a scene in Mandvi's show (a child is indifferent when a relative dies until a parent's slap in the face breaks down his bravado and makes him feel the parent's pain) that occurs, far better written, in one of Tan's novels, and doubtless in many sincere US sitcoms. Nor, of course, will funny Asians be unknown to anyone here who has seen a few TV comedies. Whether wagging a finger at a husband who is "always wanting hanky-panky", or trembling with fear and lust as a Muslim trying to lose his virginity with a prostitute, Mandvi shows us only cliché and a glow of self-approbation so strong that it seems to have less to do with his characters' naivete than with his own delight in performing. Unsurprisingly, the aggressive winsomeness tails off into sentimentality, with a homily about there being many, many stones in the water but each one is different, and one must look closely to see how.

The director, Kim Hughes, contributes to the notes-to-avoid by writing that she "worked and spent more than four years developing the idea for the play," which has been "the most meaningful work for her to date."

A patronising schoolmistress might say that of a pupil; an artist commenting on her own work should know better. If the creators of Sakina's Restaurant can't see themselves as they are, how likely is it they can see anyone else?

To 5 Jan (020-7610 4224)