Bingo, Riverside Studios, London

Booby prizes from a suburb of hell

This is participatory theatre, all right. Surrounded by plastic flowers, plastic Roman ruins, an electrified Virgin and a pile of prizes (a plastic alarm clock, plastic breasts), the audience sit at long tables, waiting for their numbers to come up. For some of the cast, that time seems worryingly soon.

The caller, Anna Feodorovna, seems to have already died and to be broadcasting from some suburb of hell, in whose Woolworths she has purchased her earrings. Her pale red hair stands up in points, as if in flames, her browless eyes are ringed with soot, and her large collar seems to have been chewed by feral dogs. Anna tags the numbers with such doleful associations as "age of early menopause". When, explaining the rules, she intones, "Eef eet is a false bingo...'', it sounds as if those too hasty to claim victory had better say their prayers.

While the players try to keep their eyes on their cards, Anna's husband, Ricardo Spangnoli, capers about, distracting them with flattery as greasy as his hair and offers of real gold watches and authentic Cuban cigars. Ricardo's assistants, peddling lesser goods, are an international lot: a black girl; a pale youth in a skullcap; a bewildered-looking South American boy; a peasant in long, shapeless clothes and a headscarf; and a leering pony-tailed chap in black who smooches the female winners (advice to winners: duck).

When play is interrupted by a ringing telephone, and Ricardo tells the caller that he doesn't have all the money right now, it's not difficult to predict what happens – more and angrier calls, increasingly hysterical responses, a row between Ricardo and Anna, and the visit of an enforcer. The assistants try to keep the show on the road with exotic dances or tunes on the ocarina (a justly neglected instrument, judging from this) before fleeing, one by one, leaving behind those whom nature did not mean to be bingo callers. The Chilean boy announces the numbers in Spanish. The peasant, too timid or illiterate to speak, holds the balls up to the microphone and hopes for the best.

Felix Strategier is Ricardo, and Fran Waller Zepper is Anna in this production by the Dutch company Theatergroep Flint. The name seems a dubious one, at least in this case, for, despite the group's claims for its piece, Bingo has more in common with a murder mystery weekend than with a play – indeed, it could be a compromise evening out for a couple if one wanted to see a show and the other hated the theatre. The content is thin, the style coarse and ingratiating, and the humour the type meant to go with a lavish consumption of the beer that is sold throughout the performance.

All harmless enough if correctly labelled, except for the unpleasant mockery of poor people, none of them Western Europeans, for their ignorance and vulgarity. "She's black but she's not crazy," chortled Pony-tail as the Caribbean girl tricked a lecherous player, and I couldn't help wondering just how much one can get away with in the name of irony.

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