It has taken seven years for Simon Block's play to be produced outside of London, which already makes it feel incredibly dated; belonging to a pre-9/11, pre-Iraq era when all new plays seemed to be about young media types agonising over whether to have a baby together.
Chimps takes domestic insularity to quite startling degrees, being a drama in which a young couple split up over the question of whether or not to purchase damp treatment. When it was written, the minute dissemination of a crumbling relationship probably seemed quite important. But it really is about as edifying as watching walls dry out.
The situation is further aggravated as the couple fall prey to a pair of particularly loathsome salesmen, of the type you wouldn't entertain on your doorstop for more than five minutes - yet here it takes a good couple of hours to get rid of them.
Perhaps the play is intended as a dark parable on the decadent influence of advanced capitalism. Yet any sense that the doorstoppers are Pinteresque harbingers of indeterminate persecution is scotched by their own bald pronouncements along the lines of: "Sympathy for the client is cancer of the blood in this business."
On the plus side, the acting in Wilson Milam's production is spirited enough, particularly from Domhnall Gleeson and Claire Lams, who bicker with great conviction. Yet Michael Attwell's perplexed sales shark sums everything up when he splutters: "What is this, relationship kindergarten?" If Chimps were any more regressive, it would be swinging through the trees.
·Until June 18. Box office: 0151-709 4776.
