IF the chance meeting of the country mouse from the Norfolk tea shop and Father Christmas on the streets of London sounds the stuff of a fairytale, then think again.

Alan Ayckbourn's sinister 64th play is "a cautionary comedy of dark intentions".

In this age of Big Brother, plastic surgery and communication by text messaging, Ayckbourn has seen the tactics of role playing and acting to please, and he doesn't like what he sees.

He detects a rise in self delusion, a diminution of individual identity and a selling-out of the soul, and reveals a hardening distaste for falsehood and pretence in his darkly-amusing morality play.

Dr Faustus meets Cinderella and Pygmalion in the scruffy flat of shrill, unhappy television researcher Chloe Vines (Anna Brecon) and Sacha (Alison Pargeter), the happy-go-lucky half sister from Norfolk, who is the innocent abroad after moving to the capital to study at a North London catering college.

One day Sacha brings home Father Christmas, after rescuing him from a hit-and-run accident. He is Val (Rex Garner), or Uncle Val as he likes to be known, an old man with a generous streak, a dicky heart and a customised Roller. So generous that this sugar daddy pours gift after gift upon his little princess, changing her wardrobe from sloppy to designer label and the flat into a soulless place of white fur-lined walls and glass tops.

Gradually she turns into burnt Cinders under his deceptively corruptive influence, realising in a Damascene moment that their mutual role playing can no longer be sustained.

For Val is not all he seems. Val is a crook with a past in running brothels, as revealed by Sacha's circumspect, hangdog new neighbour with the eye- patch and breathing problem, former serious crime squad officer Ashley Croucher (Terence Booth). Yet Ashley is not above being economical with the personal truth, either.

With Ayckbourn in the role of moral policeman, there is a reactionary air to Sugar Daddies, one that yearns for honesty: the kind of honesty that Ayckbourn so admires in the acting of Alison Pargeter, who has the priceless assets of being natural and naturally funny.

Sacha bemoans that complicated people are more interesting, yet the surprisingly happy ending suggests that Ayckbourn would prefer it were not so.

That said, you sense the play's resolution, like so many peace treaties, is fighting against the tide.

Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough until August 2, then August 25 to September 13.

Box office: 01723 370541

Updated: 12:46 Thursday, July 24, 2003