When Mary, an 18-year-old uptight English miss, arrives in New York to stay with the father she hasn't seen since she was a young child, she is in for a shock. Not only does slack dad fail to meet her at the airport - so subjecting the poor lamb to the traumatising experience of New York's yellow cab service - but Mike is not the successful singer-songwriter with Broadway at his feet that Mary had imagined.
Instead, he is a feckless, struggling jingle-writer with a past he hasn't told her about, and a present that includes a lover to whom he can't commit and a songwriting partner who has problems of his own. Soon everyone is at each other's throats and skeletons tumble out of the cupboard thick and fast, until finally things are neatly tied up with a happy ending in which everyone is a little nicer and more understanding. This is, you see, not so much theatre as a live therapy lesson in how not to run your family life.
Tim Marriott's play - which is not a musical, although it does have incidental ditties - is quite the worst I've seen this year. As it is only the second week of January, that may not seem so bad, but I doubt I will (and pray I won't) see a worse one in 2005. It is inept in almost every respect, whether it is Marriott's inability to write credible dialogue rather than just monologue, or the way he casually tosses in terminal illness, a secret love child and 9/11 to move the plot along.
Given the material, it is not surprising that the acting is as limp as it is. However, Martha Dancy and Tim Marriott should be congratulated on their success in making Mary and Mike quite so repulsively unsympathetic.
· Until January 22. Box office: 020-7287 2875.
