The Night Alive, at Donmar Warehouse The glittering procession of star names that traversed the stage of the Donmar petered out after Michael Grandage, theatreland's Pied Piper, resigned as its artistic director at the start of the year to set up his own theatre company. His old stomping ground has become a place of odds and sods under successor Josie Rourke. I have enjoyed some productions - the spirited Trelawny of the Wells comes to mind - but was bored rigid by others, such as the all-female Julius Caesar. Its latest effort, The Night Alive, is a new work from Conor McPherson, and, frankly, it is hard to know what to say about it, other than that it sets a new low. The setting is a Dublin bedsit in which a potty-mouthed tenant called Tommy (Ciaran Hinds) takes in a woman (Caoilfhionn Dunne), who has been beaten up. The thing plods along listlessly for an hour until even McPherson - who also directs - seems to recognise there is a danger of his audience falling into a collective coma. Enter a hammer-wielding nutter named Kenneth (Brian Gleeson), who promptly takes a few chunks out of the skull of Tommy's hapless mate Doc (Michael McElhatton). Meanwhile, it's "f--- this," and "f--- that" from Tommy. One left for home with a head that had taken almost as much as poor old Doc's. To July 27; donmarwarehouse.com