From the cliched (“It's not you, it's me”) to the inventive (“I've been transferred to Bangalore”) to the frank (“I know some penises bend, but not as much as yours”), this assemblage of sketches, named after the Paul Simon song, leads us through the agonies and embarrassments of the break-up.

Commissioned from the young playwrights Lucy Chillery, Ben Ellis, Stacey Gregg, Lucy Kirkwood and Ben Schiffer for the Latitude Festival and inspired by anonymous real-life stories submitted by Bush audience members, the resulting hour-long romp has the chaotic, off-the-wall spontaneity of a student skit. It rarely troubles to probe too deeply into matters of the heart, mostly contenting itself with the jokily libidinous. But, performed by a crack cast of four, two of whom are familiar TV comedy faces, Anthea Williams's production offers plenty of zing.

As a flip-chart enumerates each of the 50 ways to give someone the elbow, we meet dumpers and dumpees. There's Michelle Terry as Rosaline, swigging bitterly from a wine bottle, unceremoniously forsaken by Shakespeare's gushy Romeo in favour of her slutty cousin Juliet. Kobna Holdbrook- Smith's ecstasy-addled clubber is so caught up in drug-fuelled fantasy that he mentally falls for, dates and despairs of a woman who catches his bloodshot eye on the dancefloor before he has even approached her. There's a case of comic bestiality in a musical number, when a farmer falls for a Jersey cow, little imagining that one day her milk will turn sour. And a lovelorn guitar ballad performed by Ralf Little (The Royle Family, Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps) unexpectedly explodes from mushy woeful remembrance into a salutary, vengeful chorus of “F**k you, Jenny, f**k you!”

But as anyone who has ever experienced it knows only too well, the end of a meaningful relationship - and, with it, the wholesale rejection of the heart, soul and mind so willingly offered up - is above all painful. Only on a couple of occasions does this piece venture into that tender territory where banality and humiliation exacerbate the suffering. Terry gives us the cruel spectacle of a woman dressed for seduction, stood up in a bar and dispatched by text message.

Most affectingly, Claire Keelan (from Nathan Barley) sits in her underwear by the phone, sobbing, trembling, snorting coke and, as if she weren't miserable enough, listening to Radiohead. Her self-abasement and utter desperation are uncompromisingly honest and horribly uncomfortable to watch.

Mostly, though, the show opts to poke fun at, even to celebrate human frailty. It won't change your life, and doesn't pretend to; but if you have been left high and dry, it might just put the smile back on your face.

Box office: 020-8743 5050, to Aug 9

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