A play about the world of crown green bowling may seem only slightly more exciting than a play about falling asleep in an armchair. Yet, though John Godber's interests have become more sedentary of late, this gentle, geriatric tale is the most radical drama he has produced for some time. What sounds like a typically Godberian ensemble piece - Up and Under updated for the third age, or Bouncers with back trouble - is in fact an environmental satire.
Set in a not-too-distant future in which it is 30C at Christmas, most of Hull is under water, and bungalows on high ground are changing hands for £5m. Godber chides the bowlers for their bunker mentality, though there is a neat irony that the characters become more anarchic as they get older: watering the green in defiance of drought regulations, running an illegal fridge and smoking cannabis to ease their aches and pains.
Godber's production features fine contributions from Robert Angell and Martin Barrass as a pair of quarrelsome old codgers; Jack Brady gives a splendidly hot-and-bothered performance as an online delivery drone, and Iain Rogerson is good value as an ageing playboy who complains that "there isn't a single organ in my body for which I'm not taking a tablet".
But the pick of the performances comes from the always-excellent Sarah Parks, who gives vent to a magnificent stream of senile non-sequiturs - "I've always liked black men. And they can't swim" - as well as the more sombre observation that bowling is a game whose rules have remained fundamentally unaltered for over 5,000 years. Metaphors for the futility of human endeavour don't come much more hopeless than that.
· Until June 23. Box office: 01482 323638.
