It may be big in Barcelona, but this charmless Catalan comedy by Joel Joan and Jordi Sanchez seems totally redundant in Britain. Uneasily transposed by Gordon Anderson for Actors Touring Company, it has more holes than a leaky colander and simply reminds you how much better Mike Leigh and Alan Ayckbourn have dealt with the plight of young suburbanites.
The plot revolves around two couples and two disastrous dinner parties. In the first we see the fractiously married Matthew and Olivia entertaining Christian and Suzanna, who rejoice in their untethered freedom. But since Christian is a bumptious prick and Suzanna a media name-dropper, it is hard to see what the couples have in common. By the second dinner party Matthew and Olivia are so obsessively preoccupied with their six-month-old baby that their now-estranged visitors can view their domestic chaos only with amazement.
In narrative terms, the play is full of loose ends: you never hear what became of Olivia's affair with a colleague or of Christian's plans to become a hot-shot New York architect. Characterisation is also risible: the idea that the uninteresting Suzanna, who'd be lucky to get a late-night slot on local hospital radio, would turn into a famed American talk-show host beggars belief. But worst of all is the play's cynicism, its assumption that men are either henpecked husbands or vagabond cocks and that for women there is no middle ground between suffocating motherhood or careerist infertility.
David Grindley, responsible for the recent revival of Abigail's Party, directs mechanically. Of the four actors only Doon MacKichan, as the harassed mum coping with her baby's wails and vomit, gives the impression of someone you might have met in the real world. Otherwise this is a needless Catalan import that proves that, if extreme cases make bad law, far-fetched characters make worse drama.
· Until January 10. Box office: 020-7478 0100.
