Carl, Chalky and Lionel are looking forward to their big night out. Together with Rick, a colleague from the car repair shop where they all work, they have clubbed together to buy a greyhound. Tonight she is going to make her debut at the local track and it is going to be basket meals and celebration all round; a bit of sparkle in their humdrum lives.
However, Carl seems anxious to stop his younger brother, Danny, from leaving the flat to see his fiancee. He feels in need of some moral support because Chalky and Lionel are unaware that he has invited a fifth person to join the syndicate: Paul, their much-disliked and quick-tempered manager. By the time Rick arrives with the dog, things have taken a turn for the worse.
Matt Charman's first play, winner of last year's Verity Bargate award, is about modern masculinity. It has much in common with Simon Block's superior Not a Game for Boys in the way these men are defined by the absent women in their lives: Carl is still smarting from a divorce in which his wife got the kids and the house even though he feels he was the injured party; shy, inadequate Chalky yearns hopelessly for his lady lodger; slobby Lionel has let his capable wife take control of family life.
They are men in crisis: marginalised and ineffectual. So ineffectual, in fact, that when things turn nasty, nobody lifts a finger.
Initially, there is much to be enjoyed in Charman's play, and he can write dialogue. What he fails to do is create a believable world. The plotting becomes increasingly preposterous and an uncertainty in both tone and acting creeps into a scenario that hovers between farce and Tarantino without a trace of menace. After the interval, the play completely goes to the dogs. Surely there must be a script doctor in the house?
· Until May 14. Box office: 020-7478 0100.
