Spacey plays middle-aged fireman Ben Cook (pic Manuel Harlan)

Kevin Spacey is at last back where he belongs: on the stage of the Old Vic.

After the dismal start to his artistic tenure here with the play Cloaca, he now stars in Dennis McIntyre's play which he first performed at the Long Wharf Theatre, New Haven, in 1988.

But, while Spacey is mesmerising to watch, McIntyre's play offers a glibly mechanical metaphor for American life.

The actor gives a dazzling performance, but he looks like a great boxer in an exhibition bout.

I would simply beg him, as the Old Vic's artistic director, to bombard us in future with masterpieces.

The piece is more effective as a slick and sometimes wincingly contrived showcase for Spacey's acting talents than the savage satire on late-Eighties materialism in America that it's cracked up to be.

Spacey gets to strut about comically as a reborn football champ and then crumple tragically and veer into madness.

But the character comes across as a set of performance opportunities rather than a real person.

Despite the huge stage-draping American flag that flutters to the floor at the start of David Grindley's polished production, the play never persuades you that it attains the symbolic dimensions aimed for in the title.

National Anthems is sparkily acted, with Spacey in particular delivering a splashy star turn. But the play feels shallow, contrived and dated.

The play is a satire on the "greed is good" culture of the late 1980s, but the subject matter seems strangely irrelevant at a time when America is engaged in far more dangerous adventures.

David Grindley gets the most out of the jokes but can't conceal the glib nature of the play.

Spacey's project at the Old Vic is a noble one. But let's see him in Shakespeare and bona fide American classics, not mediocre fare like this.

National Anthems (poor title) is fluent, funny, an easy watch with several clever lines. The set is opulent, the acting more perfect than the casting.

Mr Spacey is on fine form. He has the waxy face, clunky shoulders, the 'let me tell ya something!' relentlessness that can make suburban bores such social terrorists.

In places this comedy of refined manners makes this an American Abigail's Party.