The Spoils, Trafalgar Studios 1, theatre review: Jesse Eisenberg's play is genuinely funny and intelligent

Don't let recent self-penned efforts by US screen actors Zach Braff and Matthew Perry put you off

Alfie Allen as Ted and Jesse Eisenberg as Ben in The Spoils (Oliver Rosser)

Another self-penned starring vehicle by an American screen actor on the West End stage? After recent efforts by Zach Braff and Matthew Perry, you could be forgiven for wanting to run for the hills. But The Spoils, written by Jesse Eisenberg, who is here making his London theatrical debut, is different. This is his third play and, while not perfect, it's a genuinely funny and intelligent study of the corrosive penalties of American privilege and sense of entitlement. The terminal self-centredness of the poor-little-rich-kid protagonist inevitably means that he dominates the proceedings but his malaise is thrown into relief by four characters who feel fully inhabited in Scott Elliott's attractive and adroit ensemble production. It opened Off-Broadway last year and is remounted in London with two British actors (Katie Brayben and Alfie Allen) brilliantly integrated into the crack cast.

Only in the most perversely ironic sense could The Spoils be considered a vanity project. Eisenberg has made a speciality of playing nervily awkward and intense millennials (as in his breakthrough performance as Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, in The Social Network) but, by comparison with his latest character, these figures seem as serene and full of outward-looking bonhomie as Santa Claus. Ben is a weed-smoking, narcissistic jerk, wannabe film-maker and wastrel who is malingering in the snazzy Manhattan apartment that his father has bought for him. He takes out his self-loathing and aggression on his sweet-natured flatmate Kalyan (played with charm and subtlety by The Big Bang Theory actor, Kunal Nayyar). A Nepalese business student, Kalyan is allowed to live there rent-free in the unenviable role of sympathetic listener to Ben's delusions and being the poor, plucky immigrant who can be alternately idealised, patronised and treated to proprietorial physical joshing. Another character likens this co-dependency to a marriage.

Matters takes a distinct turn for the worse when Ben discovers that Sarah, a girl he had a crush on when he was eight, is engaged to be married to another elementary school acquaintance – Ted, a Wall Street Trader (engagingly portrayed as nice but a bit slow on the uptake, humour-wise, by Alfie Allen). Ben makes an excruciatingly clumsy pass at her; she twigs to his lies about his career; and his recollection in graphic detail of a childhood dream of being defecated on by her indicates the degree to which he is emotionally arrested at that stage. You cringe and wince as you laugh at the verbal humour and at the awkwardness of the social situation – the “Nepalese cheers” (the toasts, in questionable taste, to people less fortunate than oneself), say, at the central dinner party. As Ben gets increasingly out of control, Eisenberg lets you get a desolating whiff of the extreme loneliness that underlies the delusional/defensive mile-a-minute joking. And if Annapurna Sriram is smartly acerbic as Kalyan's doctor girlfriend who's always despised the hero, Katie Brayben is glowingly generous-spirited and tolerant as Sarah. The beautiful way she tries to replace Ben's unhealthy dream with a more positive school memory almost makes you believe in the slightly sentimental ending. Recommended.

To August 13; 0844 871 7627, buy tickets here