by Mark Shenton

Actor-turned-director Michael Grandage has taken over from Hollywood director Sam Mendes at London's most fashionable theatre, the Donmar Warehouse. Can he keep its reputation going?

A sense of continuity is maintained between the old regime and the new in Michael Grandage's opening salvo at the Donmar Warehouse.

The Vortex is another in this theatre's vivid reclamations of under-rated classics.

Noel Coward's 1924 play, produced when the playwright was just 25, is less well known than Hay Fever which followed a year later.

But once again it peels off the surface glitter of family life among high society to uncover a greatly damaged, dysfunctional set of characters.

Chiwetel Ejiofor excels as the son, Nicky

Florence Lancaster is so determined to hang on to her fading youth that she takes a toyboy lover, Tom Veryan, while her husband ineffectually stands by.

As played by Francesca Annis, Florence is still a ravishing beauty, but there is a brittleness and desperation to the prospect of her own youth running out - not to mention the youth running away.

When Florence's 24-year-old musician son, Nicky, returns from a year in Paris with a fianc�e in tow, the girl swiftly swaps her affections to Nicky's mother's lover.

Meanwhile Nicky, starved of love by his feckless, reckless mother, has sought the refuge of opium.

In its day, the play was considered so shocking by the Lord Chamberlain - who presided over the granting of theatrical licences - that he considered banning it.

"This picture of a frivolous and degenerate set of people," he wrote, "gives a wholly false impression of society life."

Gripping

Coward's genius was to animate this rarefied world with minute precision, and behind the constant cries for cocktails his characters dared to expose far more urgent needs.

Grandage's utterly gripping and atmospheric production permeates the stage with so much cigar and cigarette smoking that it should carry a public health warning.

A stunning ensemble of actors - another Donmar trademark - gloriously illuminates the play.

Chiwetel Ejiofor, who first made an outstanding impression on the London stage as a psychotic patient in Blue/Orange at the National, confirms that he is Britain's fastest rising stage star as the son, Nicky.

Swapping the Rastafarian ramblings of his earlier appearance for a cut-glass accent and suit, he is chameleon-like in his ability to inhabit a completely different character.

The entire cast excel, with Deborah Findlay, Bette Bourne, Indira Varma, Nina Sosanya, Mark Umbers, Michael Hadley, Daniel Weyman and Toni Kanal bringing this portrait of society in miniature to life in provocative detail.