All male dramatists ultimately write about their fathers. But David Eldridge's new play, with the title standing for "mutually assured destruction" - feels more like the repayment of a filial debt than a gripping drama. Much as I admire Eldridge's past work, on this occasion I sense the subject matters more to him than it does to anyone else.
The bulk of the action is set in a Romford semi in 1984 and is seen through the eyes of 11-year-old John. Precociously haunted by cold war politics and the showing of an apocalyptic TV drama, Threads, John is terrified by the prospect of nuclear devastation. But, on the domestic level, he watches the mutual destructiveness of his street-trader father and his frustrated mother, who seeks sexual solace with his dad's colleague, Luigi. The final scene whisks us forward to 2003, when the grown-up John and Luigi have a man-to-man showdown over the father's coffin.
The play's autobiographical status is reinforced by John's immersion in David Copperfield. But, although the scene where the hero persuades his father not to leave home pricks the nervous system, the equation between the domestic and international cold war seems forced: it doesn't help that it is eventually spelt out in capital letters. The tributes to a father who flogged his guts out to pay for his son's education are also not borne out by the dramatic evidence: what we actually see is a dad locked into a fractious marriage and constantly questioning his son's suitability for public school.
Eldridge's play has a raw authenticity. But the last scene feels like an awkward coda and, for all the attempts to link private and public worlds, no reference is made to the miners' strike, which dominated British politics in 1984. Lewis Chase as the boy hero, Lee Ross as his surly father and Jo McInnes as his distracted mother all give good performances in Hettie Macdonald's production; but, in the end, I felt Eldridge had got something out of his system rather than illuminated common experience.
· Until May 22. Box office: 020-7610 4224.
