How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, Soho Theatre, London, *

A failure shared is not a failure halved

Like so much else, failure isn't what it used to be. The heroic failure has declined along with the hero, from Scott of the Antarctic to Eddie the Eagle, and "failure art" has followed the same downward trajectory.

This expression of a fatalistic, wistful people was at its best in the period that began with Mr Pooter pootling along in The Diary of a Nobody; continued with Evelyn Waugh's protagonists enduring a hail of heavenly displeasure; and ended, probably, with John Osborne's restless, resentful alter egos.

Now, however, our failures, in the West End as elsewhere, simply whine and sulk, about what even the kindest friend would be hard-pressed to call a just grievance. For example, the actresses in two one-woman shows currently on in London, both playing vain, selfish characters, complain about the unfairness of their not having rich, tall boyfriends. And in another show, a Cliff Richard impersonator pouts at not having actually won the Eurovision Song Contest with "Congratulations".

Tim Fountain's addition to this sad gallery is based on a journalist called Toby Young's memoir of a few years in New York, published when editors would thrust their hands deep into their pockets on hearing the words The New Yorker or Vanity Fair, an exercise nearly as unproductive as masturbation and rather more expensive. The half of the book that I read made me laugh only twice: at the prefatory note to the paperback, published after the World Trade Centre tragedy ("Clearly, not all the residents of Manhattan are ... shallow, narcissistic creatures") and a 25-word footnote with five mistakes ("the little old lady from Dubergue").

At the show itself, I also laughed twice, and at lines that were not intended to be funny – as when Young, played by Jack Davenport, tells us how excited he is at writing for a magazine to which Dorothy Parker, D H Lawrence, and T S Eliot had contributed. The present Vanity Fair, of course, has as little in common with the one that folded in 1936 as Mohamed Al Fayed's exhumed Punch had with the original, but, more than that, the character we see hardly strikes us as a literary intellectual. His ambitions are limited to gatecrashing movie-star parties and getting into bed with beautiful but stupid girls, ideally next to a one-way mirror, with his envious male friends on the other side.

Great careers have, it is true, started with such puerile aims, but then involvement with the work takes over. Young, though, makes no movie and writes no book except this record of having article ideas rejected (he wants to date a Playmate and ridicule her, or annoy people by setting off his car alarm at night), or having to spend a whole day getting Damien Hirst to sit still for a photo.

My second laugh was caused by Young's saying that "nothing had prepared me for the realisation that I wasn't one of life's winners". A cosseted life indeed, for a 32-year-old man of emotional immaturity, gross insensitivity, and repellent appearance. (He is the son of Lord Young, who founded both the Open University and the Consumers' Association.)

The casting of the nice-looking Davenport makes the characterisation as implausible as it is unappealing: one can't believe his miserable confession that he has had only five one-night stands in his life. Indeed, Young's future wife goes to bed with him only after getting "shit-faced", an incident that should make a charming anecdote for their little ones: "Daddy, how did you and mummy meet?" "Well, one night, she got shit-faced...")

To 17 May (020-7478 0100)