'I love your work, I love it. I've seen you do those turns on a sixpence . . . You're fabulous. And this material is going to be fabulous once it's punched up." Producer James is working flat out to bag the hot young star he must secure if his new film is to be made. The role, he assures Amy, is ideal for her. "She is three-dimensional. I would love to see you play three-dimensional again after three or four . . ." He quickly stops, realising this is not a tactful turn in his spiel.

Moments such as this provoke a wry smile among members of the audience for Mark Ravenhill's monologue play Product. They show the writer's understanding of character and his talent to amuse. Ravenhill takes delight, too, in the nuances of language. How exactly right it is, for instance, that his spivvy would-be mogul should refer to "this business we call show".

His enthusiasm for the script - "this is edgy stuff," he enthuses more than once - is the more laughable when measured against the crassness of its content. Amy, you see, is to play a young woman whose "aching sexuality" (we hear much of this) is stirred by the "husky" charms (again, these are much stressed) of an al-Qaeda terrorist she meets on a plane. Such is her passion that she consents to die with him, strapped with explosives on a planned suicide mission.

James's exposition of the plot - and there's lots more of it - is interrupted once or twice by asides that betray his recognition of its stupidity. The result is a well-rounded character, who was portrayed at the play's debut at the 2005 Edinburgh Fringe by the writer himself: "Mark Ravenhill: Unplugged", as he jokingly described it in an interview. In last week's student revival in Oxford the greaseball producer was most amusingly presented by Paul Russell, clearly an actor of considerable ability.

Director Kane Moore gave us a different actress every night in the role of the silent Amy - Alys Denby on the night I went. Cleverly, he ensured all came completely new to the play. This meant that the occasional looks of surprise, incredulity, even contempt - which were relayed by a video camera on to a large screen - were as genuine as the sexy starlet's own would presumably have been.