Theatre - Lauren Booth enjoys a wonky evening in north London

Alistair Beaton's scathing satire Feelgood is creating a sensation among the pearls and corduroy set in north London. At Saturday's sell-out matinee, the audience greeted this hilarious play as if it were a docusoap, not an OTT parody of the government's spin machine. Along with belly laughs galore, there were sighs and mutterings of "Yes, exactly" and "That's so typical of this lot", as the ruthless world of political spin was revealed in all its double-dealing glory.

Beaton is no newcomer to political comedy. Last year, he attempted to clear the inky waters of Blair-speak in his pocket guide The Little Book of New Labour Bollocks, and once upon a time he wrote gags for Gordon Brown's speeches. So it is not surprising that he gives us such a believable peek at the pressure-cooker hysteria surrounding party conference week.

We join the PM's aggressive press secretary, Eddie, and an unhappy wonk in a hotel suite, joylessly constructing DL's speech for the next day. The title DL is open to interpretation. To the Prime Minister's posh pal, George, played with foppish arrogance by Nigel Planer, it stands for Divine Light. To the rest of the team, it stands for Dodgy Leader and Dreadfully Lightweight. As the press secretary crowbars phrases such as "being honest with the public" and moments of "spontaneity" into the speech, a scandal threatens to leak out.

George has been conducting illegal GM crop trials on hops. Now genetically modified beer has been accidentally served to the public, causing men to grow breasts. But worse still, a campaigning journalist is on to the story. Yes, it is farcical. But it is also very funny. As Eddie, played by a snarling Henry Goodman, jumps up and down yelling expletives, we shiver with a sense of deja vu, as the minister responsible is blackmailed into resigning, even though he has "no intention of doing the honourable thing". And this is the most compelling aspect of Max Stafford-Clark's production - even as you enjoy the larger-than-life moments of comedy, you still feel dirtied by the all too plausible backbiting of his sharply observed characters.

Events finally seem about to get the better of Eddie. All his brash threats fail to stop a delegate from saying the word "comrade" on the podium, twice; demonstrators are running amok on the seafront; and the media smells warm, red blood. The final, crushing blow to new Labour's faux sincerity is saved for Nigel Cooke: with hand-wringing charm, he delivers the rehearsed speech, complete with scripted pauses, to an audience that is a shade more cynical about politics than it was just two hours before.

You can tell that Beaton is no fan of new Labour, and occasionally his characters are caught clumsily preaching the writer's own philosophy. But in Hampstead, for the next six weeks, he'll be preaching to the already converted.

Feelgood is running at the Hampstead Theatre in north London (020 7722 9301) until 10 March

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