The Road to Ruin, Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond

A family's misfortunes

The title makes it sound like a cautionary melodrama, but Thomas Holcroft's play of 1792 is actually a comedy – or, as the Oxford Companion to English Literature calls it, deftly identifying the problem, a sentimental comedy. Though the subject is gambling fever – young Harry Dornton nearly bankrupts his father as well as himself – the play is neither serious nor frivolous. Instead of soberly examining the irrationality and selfishness of gambling, or making it a metaphor for human affairs, Holcroft merely uses the subject for its topical interest – this was the period when fortunes were won and lost in an hour at the track or the tables. The Road to Ruin is pleasant enough but, with its lack of depth and bite, it could be an 18th-century sitcom.

For instance, Harry's father has exactly one character trait – despite everything, and despite what he says, he loves his son. In the first scene, Mr Dornton announces that Harry has really gone too far this time, and must now be turned out to starve. But then he rounds indignantly on the servant who takes him at his word. This simple piece of crowd-pleasing humour is repeated a bit later, and repeated again and again.

Apart from a money-lender with a sideline in blackmail, the characters are as mild as they are thin. The widow Warren who, though twice Harry's age, hopes to marry him, appears to want Harry not as a bed partner but as merely another fashionable frill to aid her impersonation of a well-dressed lamb chop. Indeed, none of the characters is given to lust or cynicism, an omission that, while getting the play past the censors, makes it seem, considering the subject, timid and unreal.

Like standard television fare, The Road to Ruin concerns family and love problems whose resolution (and the method by which they will be resolved) is obvious from the first. Apart from the occasional well-turned line – "You are my cruet of cayenne," says Harry airily to a stern critic, "and a sprinkling of you is excellent" – the dialogue is merely serviceable, the tone tepid, at times primly moral. "Suffer I ought, and suffer I must," says the penitent Harry, "but do not let my tradesmen go unpaid." One can imagine how heartily this sentiment must have been applauded by the audience Holcroft was aiming for. The play was a huge hit, and was frequently revived in the 19th century, but has not had a professional production for 50 years – doubtless because, with the end of censorship, we can now see the Restoration's far more diverting beaux, fops, and sluts.

Still, Sam Walters' production is deft and cheery, and his cast appealing – though Auriol Smith's realistic acting is undermined by a quavery voice that makes the 50-year-old widow sound as if she's in her seventies. Ed Stoppard as Harry and Ben Warwick as his friend are full of fresh, youthful charm, as is Claire Redcliffe, who makes an endearing and plausible virgin. The hit of the evening, though, is John Paul Connolly in the role of the Irishman, who talks as if he has just leapt from a galloping horse. In frank pursuit of the widow, he says – "Full cry! Must have her!" – but knows she'll be hard to handle: "Skittish! Won't answer the whip!"

To 12 Oct (020-8940 3633)