It is possible to make great theatre out of the most absurdly undramatic situations. A pair of tramps being stood up by their mate - that worked quite well. A couple of minor Shakespearean characters tossing a coin to pass the time - it has potential. But a bunch of New Labour politicos in a think-tank? Sorry, it can't be done.
Steve Waters's play charts the progress of six Oxford University chums as they convene to toast the success of the ideas factory, Polis, they founded 15 years ago. In that time, it has evolved from a common-room debating society to a swish New Labour talking shop occupying premises in a remote, converted farmhouse. The group has even commissioned an architect to install a glass roof: so they really can sit around in a tank, thinking.
Yet the anticipated round of cork-popping and back-slapping is not going entirely to plan. A compromising document has been leaked to the press; and a rowdy band of anti-globalisation protestors has assembled by the gates to pelt the arrivals with invective and flour.
By the interval, I was sorely tempted to join them. Waters is an earnest, committed writer with some significant points to make about the collapse of youthful idealism and the compromising taint of power; yet the manner in which he makes them can be defeatingly prolix. The forward thrust of the argument is obstructed by emotional flashbacks, in which each member of the group is obliged to stalk up and kiss their colleagues meaningfully on the lips.
Director Josie Rourke endeavours to add a bit of visual pizzazz (flashing disco floors? In a farmhouse?). But she can't do much to shift the skeins of static dialogue, about which it's hard not to concur with the weary disillusion of a disgraced MP who concludes: "So much of it is so fucking dull."
· Until November 13. Box office: 0114-249 6000.
