WRITTEN in 1970 as his first play as resident dramatist at the Royal Court, Christopher Hampton's The Philanthropist became so "disgracefully successful" - his description - that it paid for the air conditioning at this enfant terrible of British theatres.

Aptly, plenty of hot air rises from an analytical black comedy that carries the youthful DNA of a super-confident Hampton, fresh out of Oxford with the shock of the new about him.

The setting is the rarefied world of bourgeois Oxbridge academia, where the chattering intellectual class has time to pleasure itself, cruelly, at the expense of lesser mortals.

When John (John Hasselgreen), a young playwright of more ambition than talent, blows his brains out at the play's start, the emotionally barren, smug don Donald (Paul Stonehouse) indulges himself by topping fellow academic Philip's unfortunate use of the word "cerebral" by making a joke about John being "absent-minded".

Later, when news comes that a loony retired lieutenant colonel has gunned down the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, Philip's dinner party goes ahead as if nothing significant has happened, beyond another chance for intellectual sparring.

Philip (Alan Booty) is the philanthropist of the title, itself a pointer to the play being an ironic twist on Moliere's Le Misanthrope. Philip is a philologist, a man obsessed with words but whose own tongue-tripping ineffectuality has the effect of causing havoc when he means to do no such harm.

Booty is a picture of pathos, crumpled in the corner of his sofa or chomping on his Cornflakes with the look of a scolded little boy.

Hampton doesn't much care for these self-obsessed people, particularly the insufferably arrogant, belligerent writer Braham (Paul Osborne), and his feminist streak shows through in the mistreatment of nymphomaniac Araminta (Vicki Hill in her Settlement debut), the silent Liz (Fiona Mozeley) and brittle Celia (Beverley Chapman).

Paul Toy's caustic, ever-darkening production stalks you like a shark; the humour is as black and bleak as the clothes; the performances again set the benchmark for amateur excellence in York. Settlement at their unsettling best.

The Philanthropist, York Settlement Community Players, Friargate Theatre, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm. Box office: 0845 961 3000.

Updated: 15:45 Wednesday, June 29, 2005