For a company associated with innovative, hi-tech theatre, Pilot has taken a peculiarly retro turn of late. Having transported itself back into the luridly furnished world of Abigail's Party, the company remains stuck in the same era to revive Ayub Khan-Din's noisy paean to cultural confusion in 1970s Salford.
Damian Cruden's production establishes a concrete sense of time when an orange space-hopper bounces on before a word is spoken. The clever perspective of Laura McEwen's design frames the action like a giant family photograph, creating the impression that the Khans are a Borrower-sized clan scurrying around on their own mantelpiece.
Khan-Din's semi-autobiographical tale is getting on for 10 years old now, yet like that other great product of Anglo-Asian misunderstanding, it retains the spicy vitality and garish colouring of a good chicken tikka masala. The comic topography and Salford cadences of the script are so perfectly laid out that it's difficult for the cast to go wrong, and there's a clutch of notable performances here, particularly from Janys Chambers as Ella, whose devotion to her family is the delicate thread holding it together, while the ham-fisted adherence to traditional values of her husband George (Marc Anwar) threatens to smash it apart.
There's great work as well from Rokhsaneh Ghawam-Shahidi as the obstreperous Meenah, outnumbered by her brothers; Damian Asher as Abdul, the family's peace-maker; and Adam Deacon as troubled introvert Sajit, the only boy ever to go missing inside a parka.
There are some stolid moments of over-explication, whose excision from the screenplay arguably made Khan-Din's film version slightly superior. But Pilot's production establishes the piece as a bona fide classic, whose value appears to appreciate like a well-preserved pair of vintage Adidas sneakers.
· Until October 8. Box office: 01904 623568. Then touring.
