Theatre: Where have all the cowboys gone? To Australia

The John Wayne Principle Nuffield Theatre Southampton

OUR AIRWAVES may be awash with Australian soaps, but our stages are not exactly rife with new drama from down under. In Patrick Sandford, the artistic director of Southampton's Nuffield Theatre, Aussie playwrights seem to have found a sparky champion. A couple of seasons back, he directed the British premiere of Dead White Males, David Williamson's rumbustious attack on political correctness in universities. Now Sandford gives the first English airing to Tony McNamara's very funny comedy, The John Wayne Principle. Its target - the cut-throat ethics of global business, may be broader and easier than PC hypocrisies, but in terms of language, this show is as vivid and pungent as a safari round the gussets of Sir Les Patterson.

In the world McNamara conjures up, to call someone a "weeping sore in a suit", is to be almost arse-lickingly friendly. And when his characters get down to the insults, a skunk's wedding tackle has been known to emit more pleasant sprays. The story is jolted into life by the botched suicide of a Sydney tycoon. Bandaged, comatose and with half his face missing. Looking like a cross between the sword of Damocles and an entry for the Turner Prize, he is hoisted on his hospital bed to dangle over Sandford's clever, entertaining production.

That's a symbolically appropriate position, because his 30-page suicide note casts a baleful shadow over his progeny: Sally Bourne's big tough Serena, the daughter who loyally stayed and Alan Westaway's wonderfully engaging Robbie, the Harvard MBA son who opted for a househusband life with his wife and son in remote Northern Queensland. The father's missive decrees that half of the multi-million dollar business will go to the prodigal son, if he proves that he can run it for a year. In its tempting and potentially corrupting provisions, this document makes the paternal will in The Merchant of Venice look like the last word in posthumous liberation.

As Robbie and wife (played with a nice, gently understated authority by Pryanga Elan) decamp to Sydney promising themselves this is just for a year, the epic unloveliness of big business unfolds before us. Moral nullity in a French linen suit, Patrick Tooney's wittily performed Stafford becomes Robbie's right-hand man and his guide to a universe where it is quite all right to sell torture equipment. Stafford and his ghastly wife (Lucinda Cowan), who loves "to meld disparate cuisines" are, like all the best monsters, rather loveable.

Sandford's cast sound as if they really relish wrapping their lips round the juicy dialogue. It's for the lines, rather than the plot line, that you would want to see this show. McNamara's is a talent worth keeping an ear out for.

Paul Taylor

To 20 November (booking: 01703 671771)