In the summer of 1990 Manchester was the capital of cool, home to Happy Mondays, the Stone Roses and the Haçienda. It was also home to Christie, Luke and the Raffa ice-cream clan, protagonists of new plays from Nick Leather and Chloe Moss that share the same soundtrack, yet take widely divergent means of encapsulating the euphoria of the second summer of love.
The scenario of Moss's Christmas Is Miles Away is simplicity itself: school-leavers Luke and Christie are best mates. Then Christie gets a girlfriend and Luke gets left in the cold. There's almost nothing to it, yet Moss assuredly captures the exhilarating terror of standing on the cusp of adulthood and leaving childhood certainties behind. She finds credible language to gain access to the inner world of characters who barely know how to speak their minds. In an outstandingly touching scene, Luke attempts to console his mate following the death of his father, prompting Christie to howl: "All I know is I've got forever in my head and I can't get over it."
Sarah Frankcom's spare and sensitive production features brilliantly unaffected performances from David Judge as Christie, Paul Stocker as Luke and Georgia Taylor as Julie, a sweet girl whose blithe intrusion turns everything sour.
In comparison with the ease and understatement of Moss's script, Nick Leather's All the Ordinary Angels strains every sinew for comic effect. Papa Raffa decides that it is time to hang up his ice-cream scoop and leave sons Lino and Rocco to slug it out for control of his gelato empire. Dirty tricks abound, culminating in the development of an addictive new flavour, whose illicit secret ingredient ought not to be sniffed at.
Michael Buffong's production has a madcap energy, yet Peter Polycarpou's Papa is so capricious, Craig Cheetham's Rocco so mendacious and Al Weaver's Lino such a wet rag that it is difficult to care who will gain control of the family's frozen assets. And despite the obvious feeding of information about a gas leak in the factory, the action limply concludes with a sobbing rapprochement between father and son. Perhaps it is fitting that such an overwrought and underwhelming play should end not with a bang but a whimper.
· Until November 19. Box office: 0161-883 9833.
