Plays about mating and marriage are 10 a penny, but plays about mating, marriage and head lice, and the pressures that parenthood puts upon a relationship when duty demands you make packed lunches when you'd rather be drinking cocktails, and you are too tired to talk let alone have sex, are a rarity. So I was looking forward to Amelia Bullmore's play, despite a limited tolerance for watching adult actors pretending to be children.
The opening does not disappoint. There was a shiver of recognition at the Hammersby family kitchen that appears to have been nuked by ruthless small terrorists who have employed toys as weapons of mass destruction. In Jane Hammersby's frustration I saw myself at approximately 8.20am on term-time mornings when the Everest task of getting the kids to school fully clothed seems so impossible that I often wonder why I didn't take the easy option and just devour them at birth.
There are other things to like in this domestic comedy that is knowingly truthful about the psychological space that men award themselves while women grapple on the coalface of parenthood. Even better is the way that it depicts Kev Hammersby's confession that he is in love with another woman like the immature action of a not fully grown puppy delivering a bone. Kev feels big for fessing up; in a blink Jane sees her whole world fall apart.
But if Bullmore's play is good about the structural cracks that creep into a marriage when you breed, it has a few structural problems of its own, particularly in the depiction of Kev's footloose best friend, Phil, and his high-maintenance love 'em and leave 'em girlfriend, Lorna.
The intimacy of the Bush, where Mammals premiered, must have worked in its favour, because this staging is exposing, highlighting the plot contrivances and making the whole thing feel as dated as a 1970s TV sit-com. It feels both rushed and too flimsy, like a blueprint for a play, not the finished article.
· Until Saturday. Box office: 01865 305305. Then touring.
