If you took the four knights who murdered Becket in Canterbury Cathedral and imagined them as outcasts from Men Behaving Badly, Quentin Tarantino, and a pre-game rugby retreat, you'd get some idea of where Paul Corcoran's first play is pitching in from. As an exercise in laddishness, they don't get much more Loaded than this: a bit of cynicism here, a bit of violence and sex there, and very angst-ridden. But then, surprise, surprise, you still wouldn't have it.

Because Four Nights in Knaresborough also carries a bucketful of homoeroticism besides. ''Fitz'' - Reginald FitzUrse - has the hots for ''Traci'' - William de Traci, who loves ''Brito'' - Richard le Bret - who loves the serving wench Catherine, who loves her master Morville. It's that kind of castle. What else can you do when holed up in Yorkshire having committed the crime of the century. Stay low, and get on each other's nerves.

For a first play, its a nifty historical conceit that cleverly plugs into current preoccupations with masculinity and male bonding. Richard Wilson's crafty production also has the priceless addition of Jonny Lee Miller.

Not just a pretty face, the star of Trainspotting and Regeneration, exceptionally for these days, can also transmit emotions as powerfully on stage as he does on film. Here, his puppy-dog mix of

roguishness and vulnerability makes a perfect counterfoil to Christopher Fulford's splendidly world-weary Traci who, cross-questioned when returning with Brito, covered in blood from a spot of local massacring, observes merely: ''We went out. Couldn't sleep.'' Brutishness satirised or celebrated? It's hard to say.

Corcoran's wit isn't quite as sharp as he thinks it is. All the same, Four Nights should do the Tricycle's coffers no end of good.

n Four Nights in

Knaresborough is at the

Tricycle until December 4.