Dave is forty-five, unemployed and immature, living on a diet of lager and computer games, and keen on saying things like "I am the big kahuna, kiddo". His son William, who’s eighteen, has recently left school and wants to use his gap year to gain work experience.
But Dave has other ideas, clumsily insisting that William, who’s gay, is "meant to be swimming against the tide" and "mincing around with dyed hair, denim hot pants and ill-advised tattoos".
Before long Dave is whisking his son away to Thailand, and it’s clear that his true mission is selfish. William is initially appalled by his dad’s hedonistic antics and pronouncement that "exotic birds" are "ravenous for English sausage". But soon he hooks up with suave architect Matias (Max Percy) and then, in a not entirely convincing role reversal, he transforms into a drug-crazed party boy, while Dave connects with Mae, a local trans woman who’s a source of pragmatic wisdom.
Adam Lannon brings a gruff loucheness to Dave, and Alex Britt suggests William’s jittery anxieties, while Michelle Collins, best-known as EastEnders' Cindy Beale, makes the most of an underwritten role as William’s mother Cath. She’s on her own more prosaic voyage of self-discovery, and when she eventually turns up in Thailand, she’s jubilant because "I just got a Waitrose shop for Lidl money".
That’s one of the sharper lines in Tom Wright’s play, which switches between flippancy, in-yer-face vehemence and a rather clichéd earnestness about the importance of freedom. In Rikki Beadle-Blair’s production the characters either edge round the stage on catwalks (Cath's high heels look worryingly vertiginous) or clamber down into its central pit. This has the effect of emphasising the writing's strident style and the stilted nature of the confrontations between people who are mostly unsympathetic without being intriguingly so.
Until February 23 (020 7870 6876, parktheatre.co.uk)
