It was a smash hit Off-Broadway in the early Nineties, but can James Sherman's romantic comedy repeat the trick over here? The Hackney Empire seems to think so, since it's giving up its 1,300 seats to this new production every night for a month. And Beau Jest is certainly easy to consume: an unlikely but likeable story of a Jewish girl who hires an escort to pose as her Jewish boyfriend to fool her parents - no danger of that blowing up in her face, then. Still, Susie McKenna's production plays it at such a zestful clip that for the most part you have no time to question the kooky premise too deeply.

Chicago, the Eighties. Kindergarten teacher Sarah Goldman is going out with advertising man Chris, played with preppy zeal by Alex Hardy. We know Chris is wrong for her because he wears red braces and looks like Daryl Hall. He's also a gentile, which is Kryptonite to Laura's old-fashioned folks. But then, disaster: Sarah's escort Bob turns out not to be Jewish either. With no time to prepare for this sham dinner, he has to hurriedly improvise. “What are you, Sephardic?” they ask him. “No, no, I'm Jewish,” he retorts.

It's deftly done. Laura Pulver is a suitably brittle Sarah, while Adam Rayner makes Bob charming but not smug, vulnerable but no schmuck. Meanwhile the Goldmans, Sue Kelvin and Jack Chissick, wring every drop of juice out of their Jewish-American archetypes without oying their way into complete caricature.

When the process is repeated over a Seder meal in the second act, though, diminishing returns set in even as the set pieces get better. The stakes fail to raise - the worst that can befall Adam is a bit of egg on face - and the characters only gently deepen, so it gets harder to shush the voice in your head going “Silly! Silly!”

Love blooms and issues are addressed in Act III. “I look at my parents,” says Sarah, “all I see is parents, I never see them as individuals.” Uh-huh. By now, though, we're primed for light farce, not famiy drama. The questions of parents imposing their values are overlaid on events rather than dancing with them.

But when it's not having its Hallmark moments, the writing is always zippy, the culture-clash comedy sitcom slick. I can't see Beau Jest becoming a phenomenon over here: the effect is less vivid an ocean away at two decades' remove. Emotional resonance? Not so much. But it's full of fun and generously played.

Box office: 020-8985 2424. Until June 7

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