Take a black comedy that shades into the darker recesses of Theatre of the Absurd. Add in a prophetic chorus of helmeted Firemen who sound heavily schooled in classical Greek tragedy and TS Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. You will then find yourself caught in the bracingly strange and sinister world of Max Frisch's The Arsonists, a mid-20th-century Absurdist play of timeless vitality.

Neatly updated to the present in Ramin Gray's production and couched in Alistair Beaton's fresh, felicitous translation, The Arsonists sets its critical sights on people too fearful to face glaring reality: Frisch took his negative inspiration from the appeasing Czech president who took into government Communists intent upon destroying the country's independence, lofty German intellectualsand Jews who would not believe Hitler was intent upon destroying them.

An allegory and parable is framed about bourgeois guilt and moral myopia. Frisch's prosperous crooked businessman, Will Keen's Mr Biedermann, knows the town is possessed by an epidemic of arsonists, who wheedle their way into homes on pretexts of needing a place to sleep.Yet he still allows an ingratiating ex-wrestler (the insufficiently pugilistic Paul Chahidi), who comes knocking at his opulent front door, to stay the night.

A fascinating helter-skelter ride into the realms of absurd drama and gallows humour begins. Schmidt , together with Benedict Cumberbatch's far too mild-mannered former waiter Eisenring, assemble oil drum, detonators and fuse-wire in the attic. Keen's modestly furious Biedermann cannot bring himself to tell a visiting policeman the terrible truth. "If I report them to the police I know I'll be making enemies of them," he later explains to his wife Babette, as he tries to justify himself.

This comic-absurd excuse characterises Biedermann's placatory, guilt-laden dealings with the fireraisers, right down to a grisly dinner party that serves as prelude to a literally explosive finale. Gray achieves a final, provocative coup when Munir Khairdin's intellectual arsonist, presumably a Muslim terrorist, breaks ranks with Schmidt and Eisenring, because they simply enjoy setting houses on fire.

Yet Gray's lethargic production played out on Anthony Ward's opulent white and perspex set, needs to convey a far stronger, climactic sense of anxiety, foreboding and panic. Keen's phlegmatic Biedermann and Jacqueline Defferary's subdued Babette are comically competent but must operate on a far higher emotional level to make this thrilling classic fully operational.

• Until 15 December. Information: 020 7565 5000.