Here's a question for a Monday morning. What did Henry VIII and Timothy Leary have in common? Yes, they were both charismatic, arrogant, demanding, destructive and messianic, though with the religious reformer it meant treating God as a dope and with the American flower-power guru it meant treating dope as a God. But each also had six wives, though all but Marianne survived Leary's death in 1996.

Played by a nervously gushing Hetty Abbott, Marianne delivers the first of the six monologues that make up most of Philip de Gouveia's play. The others all occur during an imaginary wake organised by the last wife, Alison Baker's Barbara, in order to bring the five survivors together for some serial reminiscing. The result is entertaining but pretty fragmentary, and wanting in one key respect. It's never established why Leary matters enough to merit these dramatic obsequies.

On they come: Lisa Came's Mary, who knew Leary when his fix was a martini, not LSD; Anna Brook's Nena, a Swedish model who recalls a wedding after which acolytes brought them presents of hallucinogenic mushrooms; Charlotte Donachie's Rosemary, who fought for Leary's release when he was jailed for 30 years for possessing marijuana; Katharine Bennett-Fox's Joanna (pictured, right, with Came), whom Leary seems to have blamed for his re-arrest after his escape from prison; and Baker's no-nonsense Barbara: “I can't believe you were such a bastard to all of us.”

But a lot of the bastardy is inferred rather than evoked. De Gouveian gives too impressionistic a picture of Leary's life and doctrines.

Still, many thanks for strong performances from actresses who fully justify the claim that Leary kept pulling beautiful women. Thanks, too, for the free gifts of saivia joints and purple ohms. They're just what we critics need to keep us alert during unremarkable plays.

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