Jude is bringing his new girlfriend Ginger home to meet his family for the first time, only his family is decidedly non-nuclear and non-traditional. His mother Bonnet, a writer of graphic novels, lives with her lover Jane and they have had had a child together, Felix, fathered by gay Allen who lives with his partner, Jerry, a science journalist. So what will the deeply Christian Ginger make of this set-up?
Inevitably, there are fireworks over the Good Friday fish, particularly when the conversation turns to stem cell research. The confusions and passions aroused around the dinner table take on an added edge, with a story within a story format that focuses on Bonnet's latest comic - a futuristic tale set in a Britain run by fundamental Christians who give teenage girls purity tests, and have banned abortion and stem cell research. While Ginger, Jude and Jude's family struggle to understand each other, Bonnet's story is acted out in vigorous comic book style on the back wall. Throw in some re-enactments of lesser known stories from the Bible and the Koran and you could have a recipe for confusion, but Helen Eastman's production keeps all the plates in the air; and, although Van Badham's script is over-schematic and over-egged, it offers a fiercely intelligent and watchable evening, and a rare meeting of science and theatre.
The comic-book sequences have more energy and panache than the naturalistic family-in-terrible-crisis-stranded-in-remote-cottage-on-stormy-night scenario, and I can't say I believed in every minute of it. But it is a fascinating attempt to consider not just science, but the nature of parenthood and parenting, and the cast play with passion, slipping between present, future and many different characters with aplomb.
· Until January 26. Box office: 0870 400 0838.
