Fucking Games, Upstairs at the Royal Court , London

Sex and drugs and tired roles

Grae Cleugh's Fucking Games is a gay play that, had it been written by a heterosexual, might well have incited accusations of homophobia. This piece – like the contemporary orgy episodes in Mother Clap's Molly House – often looks less like drama than a bizarre form of DIY aversion therapy. The defence that Cleugh is attacking the cold, cock-obsessed commercialism of the urban gay scene is weakened by the fact that his risibly melodramatic plotting ends up draining respect from all his characters – even those who cling to the vision of a more fulfilling life.

Premiered here in Dominic Cooke's defiantly engrossing production, the play examines the lives of four homosexual men who meet for an evening's coke-fuelled socialising at the Chelsea home of a poisonous 49-year-old queen. Making the heartless erotic schemers of Les Liaisons Dangereuses resemble the overworked night shift at the Samaritans, Allun Corduner's Terrence wows young men with the size of his bank balance, and plies them with drink and drugs while conducting a kind of prurient seminar on gay mores. He's 10 years into a relationship with a younger, in-house lover, Jonah (the excellent Ian Dunn) – a union that exemplifies all the invidious imbalances of an "open" marriage – and a month into a clandestine affair with Daniel Lapaine's Jude, a pretty actor who likes to be taken care of. But then Jude brings round his latest boyfriend, Danny (Benjamin Davies), a young Scottish DJ, and the games begin in earnest.

Cleugh could have made something gut-wrenching from the challenge that Danny, with his scorn for the idea that a bunch of narcissists can constitute a gay "community" and his lack of scorn for the idea of monogamy, presents to Terrence's cynical values. There are indications of this when the older man recalls taking part in Britain's first gay march ("It was the beginning of our liberation") and the 20-year-old glibly rejoins, "Freedom and liberation – for what? What's liberating about all looking the same, all liking the same music, all speaking the same way – is that an identity?"

But the accent, however, falls overwhelmingly not on the forces that have turned this character into a monster, but on what he does with the "given" of his monstrosity. That exchange, for example, occurs within the context of Terrence's trying to win a bet with Jude (the youth he does not want to share) that he can bed Danny. By so doing, he will destroy the competition. But the plan backfires, with Terrence receiving what can rightly be described as his come-uppance. Meanwhile, long-suffering Jonah is on hand to pick up the pieces, with a loyalty that makes him seem less a steadfast beacon in a world of restless rapacity than a moral simpleton.

Cleugh has a good ear for the feline finessings of bitchery, but his play unfolds in a succession of twosome tête-à-têtes that are engineered by feebly motivated exits and entrances. At the Royal Court, savage yet tearful buggery has become what what bounding through a set of French windows once was in the West End. It's a case of trousers down for a full house, though Fucking Games has nothing we haven't seen before – and better hung.

To 8 December (020-7565 5000)