An excess of bad music had me out of love with Rupert Goold's revival of Edward Bond's 1981 play for Headlong (formerly the Oxford Stage Company).

Flashing with wit and smoking with a huge, righteous anger, for a while Restoration reminds us how great a writer Bond is, only for a few too many off-key notes to break the spell.

It starts off, as the title suggests, as a Restoration comedy. The fop Lord Are resolves to marry an industrialist's daughter to keep himself in pink hats, and the situation for comedy is set.

Bond brilliantly pastiches the quipstrewn badinage of the genre, his skill highlighted by Mark Lockyer's superb performance, oozing charismatic, complacent evil. Yet this is not a homage, and three scenes in our expectations are confounded by an hilarious manslaughter. Valet Bob is framed for the crime. Compliant through his vacuous loyalty to his master, he faces the gallows.

Bond's eye is on society, and it is not kindly. From the black-hearted Lord to the penny-pinching Hangman's wife to the delusional Bob, the play is amusingly populated by the ignorant and dehumanised, enslaved to convention and hierarchy-for all that they declare themselves free. We are helped to see this by a succession of songs whose metaphors or direct tirades guide us towards the message.

The author has written two new songs for this production - a mistake. The directness of references to Stop The War marches make his other musings on the timeless problem of power and authoritarianism feel academic. Worse, Adam Cork's musical arrangements, meandering vocal lines backed up by early baroque instrumentations, become more insufferable for their lack of variety and for the cast's poor vocals.

The songs make tedious a second half that already springs few surprises. The willingly oppressed remain willingly oppressed and the oppressors remain indifferent. Bond, having impaled his satirical target, seems to stand around, his sword still embedded, wondering what else to do.

• Until 30 September (020 8985 2424); www.hackneyempire.co.uk