It will scarcely come as a surprise to followers of Steven Berkoff to discover that what he has sub-titled as "a masterclass in evil" turns out to be an hilarious spoof of actors and acting and a send-up of the reverence accorded to the bard of Stratford-upon-Avon.

Turning the respectable orthodoxies arse over tip with excess and irreverence and exaggeration and energy and penetrating satire, he regales his audience with a series of villains and cameo caricatures of famous and not-so-famous actors.

Iago, he finds, is a mediocre small-minded villain, a slimy snake with a vaguely cockney accent. Richard III is a poisonous genius with a computer where his heart should be. Macbeth is a mere wannabe villain with a Scots accent who has to be made villainous by his un-sexed wife.

Shylock is a scapegoat villain, made so by by society, and conditioned, like Hamlet, to commit his villainy. The closet scene in Gertrude's chamber (where Polonius is the first of Hamlet's several victims to meet his death) is played for every ounce of farce that it is worth.

Coriolanus's villainy derives from excessive mother-love and even Oberon is judged a villain because he tries to drug his wife into becoming a raving nymphomaniac.

The links between villainy and sex or lovelessness are relentlessly exposed, as are the tricks of actors, both collectively and individually.

Berkoff's "lesson" in how to do, not a double-take but a quadruple-take, is masterfully prolonged.

The links between his various extracts are largely extempore and the whole is not so much a masterclass in evil as a manifestation of a wicked divil having a great deal of fun at everyone else's expense, and providing some splendid escapist entertainment in the process.

Plays nightly at 8.00 p.m. only until Friday. Booking at (01) 874 8525 or (01) 677 7744.