How about this for an idea to keep early evening TV schedules interesting - an Anglo-Australian soap exchange? They could send us a streaked-blond surfer type to shake things up around Albert Square, and receive in return some fag-chewing pub landlady to plot merry havoc on the beach.
This is the basic principle behind Sarah Woods' multi-dimensional comedy, which lays out two parallel soap storylines, then cross-fertilises them with fitfully hilarious but often incomprehensible results.
Lorna runs a salty East End boozer with something strange in the cellar. One day she goes down to change a barrel and re-emerges on the deck of a cruiser owned by sun-washed Australian beach-bum Thorn. It's a new lease of life for both of them, a world away from scripted platitudes, stock responses and long, lingering glances into the middle distance.
Yet even in their liberated state, Thorn and Lorna have difficulty overcoming their conditioned reflexes. "You see an out-of-control truck and you leap in front of it," explains Thorn. "It's all I know."
Laurie Sansom's production adds an additional layer of irony by casting two very capable former soap stars in the central roles - Ben Hull and Hannah Waterman, veterans of Hollyoaks and EastEnders respectively. And it adds a further level of surrealism by featuring Russell Grant (he of the astrological forecasts and terrible sweaters) in drag as a jowl-wobbling, pinafored gossip.
Yet Woods cannot resist thickening the ingenious plot until it is no longer fluid. She has trouble keeping her inconsistencies consistent. Why, for instance, does the local handyman end up in hospital after a wildly capricious sea storm when, as far as we know, he was never on the boat? It's at points like these when parody of bad soap opera comes perilously close to bad soap opera itself. Soap bubbles nicely, but it doesn't really wash.
· Until October 9. Box office: 01723 370541.
