Onassis
Novello Theatre, London WC2

I cannot say I wish I had seen the original version of Martin Sherman's Onassis when it played at the Chichester Festival Theatre two years ago, but I could at least have praised its title. Aristo could have been taken to encompass not only the shipping magnate, but his lovers Jacqueline Kennedy and Maria Callas - aristocrats indeed, if technically only of celebrity culture. Perhaps in Sherman's first draft they even had something to do beyond being walk-on (but, sadly, otherwise unmoving) targets for Aristotle Onassis's ego.

The ego is all there in Robert Lindsay's remarkable performance in the title role. It takes about five seconds to buy in to the transposition of the star of BBC1's My Family into Onassis, whose perfectly cut suits enclose a man throbbing with barbarous greed, sexual appetite and ill-will. Lindsay helps create one of the best stage monsters since Anthony Hopkins's Lambert le Roux in Pravda. But Kennedy and Callas do not get close to coming alive in the same way.

As the diva, Anna Francolini does what she can with speeches that are both pretentious and self-pitying, but poor Lydia Leonard as Jackie has as much sexual charisma as the ironing board to which Onassis cruelly compares her figure. We are told more than we are shown, although early on a graphic is projected on to the set depicting Onassis's complicated familial and business dealings. These are also outlined in an excessively long speech that earns the excellent Gawn Grainger as Costa (the great man's deputy, but here a talking footnote) a deserved round of applause.

In presenting Onassis's life as a tragedy, Sherman, whose (better) previous work includes Bent, had a problem. Since Shakespearean times, a tragic hero has implied a great man brought down by a tragic flaw. Onassis was all flaw. His death in 1975 aged 69 provoked a great outpouring of public joy. To get round this, the play's opening refers us to an older model of hero from classical antiquity, heroes who were "not necessarily heroic, not in our terms, but behaved with the sweep and grandeur of gods and yet remained humanly vulnerable".

That Onassis was Greek, with a liking for classical myth, is a coincidence that leads the playwright into even greater difficulty, because Onassis's sweep and grandeur, if they existed, are barely discernible here. Much of the action is set on one of his big yachts, yet Ulysses does not spring to mind. The man's grubby business deals, criminal conspiracies and appetite for bedding and ditching powerful women appear less and less grand as the play goes on. All the best scenes come when Sherman lets the hero be the petty peasant. In one of his rants against the Kennedys, he chances upon the cliché "get my goat" and glosses this with the news that goats are a Greek delicacy: "We eat them and fuck them!" As Jackie K tells him, midway through an anecdote about being buggered by a Turkish soldier, "It's not Homer."

So the classical metaphor must be shored up by the presence of a chorus that sings along to presumably relevant bouzouki songs that are rarely translated for our benefit. Christianity and the Greek Orthodox Church appear to have given this elderly crowd the miss, so in thrall
are they to the Old Gods whom they intermittently address. Conveniently they consult only those gods - Apollo, Aphrodite and Poseidon - with whom we are all likely to be familiar.

Sherman, perhaps (let us be charitable) wearing his learning lightly, elsewhere directs us to other pop-culture purloined myths, such as the fall of Icarus and the Minotaur's maze, although Captain Hook and his ticking crocodile get a mention, too, lest we get lost. His attempts at philosophical aphorism are similarly naff. Why, it is asked, is the death of a golden eagle more tragic than a pigeon's? "They both shit on your head."

Onassis is no more than lower-middlebrow nonsense, and nasty nonsense, too. Relying on Peter Evans's book Nemesis, Sherman has taken at face value the nastiest gossip possible. Jackie was sleeping with Onassis while still married to JFK. After his death she had an affair with Jack's brother Bobby, who ends up assassinated in a plot financed by Onassis, who is simultaneously jealous of and turned on by the arrangement. Ethel Kennedy is still alive. I am hopeful that residual sympathy for her as the last American aristocrat will ensure this play, despite its star turn, fluent direction and evocative staging, never makes it to Broadway.

Andrew Billen is a staff writer for the Times. "Onassis" runs until 26 February.