It's common for talented writers to disappear from theatre into the world of television. This is a rare example of them travelling the other way.
Sitcom veterans Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran got their break writing innuendo for Frankie Howerd, and went on to create long-running hits including Goodnight Sweetheart and Birds of a Feather. But a chance meeting with Alan Ayckbourn at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival persuaded them to try their hands at live theatre.
After all, who wouldn't forsake a weekly audience of millions in order to play to a handful of Scarborians for a couple of hundred quid?
Ayckbourn's invitation was really about artistic licence, however - an opportunity to experiment a little and ignore the ratings. Marks and Gran duly respond with a comedy in which the leading character has a terminal disease, which was never likely to impress the commissioners of light entertainment.
Ed is a retired rock'n'roll legend, dying of cancer. His main anxiety is that his acutely agoraphobic wife Claudia be taken care of after his death, and he nominates his oldest friend Clive to do the caring. What he doesn't realise is that Clive and Claudia have jumped the gun, and have been conducting a clandestine affair for months.
It would be satisfying to acclaim this as an example of theatre's ability to grasp darker themes that mainstream television would never touch, yet it ultimately only serves to illustrate the gulf between them.
You may think that at the very least a couple of established sitcom writers would know how to establish a situation and extract comedy from it. Yet Marks and Gran fail to realise that theatre requires an element of theatricality. There's no credible evidence that David Cardy's Ed really is a former rock star, other than that he idly twangs a guitar when stuck for any other business.
It also seems mighty incongruous that he should angrily tear up a letter from Oxfam while his peers are busy making poverty history.
It's laudable that television writers of Marks and Gran's standing should come over to the other side, however briefly. The trouble is, this show may eventually have you wishing you could change channels.
· In rep until September 3. Box office: 01723 370541.
