Ordinary Dreams ** TNT

Friday 22 May 2009 15:34 GMT

The neighbours are noisy, the pavements are littered with rubbish, and thirty something middleclass father-to-be Miles is getting increasingly anxious as wife Penny goes into labour. Their baby’s arrival sends him into a freefall of short-tempered outbursts as he frets about the messed up world into which his child has been born.

Meanwhile their university friend, working class Dan, is cleaning up his act after being persuaded to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings by Penny (herself a recovering dipso) and has taken up with a cheery younger American artist, Layla, who’s into dream interpretation and all things New Age.

So far, so promising, but having introduced his quartet of characters and their relationships, playwright Marcus Markou doesn’t really know what to do with them. Miles goes on the attack with a heavy-duty candlestick. Then, in depressed hypochondriac mode, he takes to the wheelchair bought on e-bay and daydreams about being the next PM and having an affair. Meanwhile Dan (Adrian Bowers) and Penny are tempted to rekindle their brief attraction from way back. But none of it really engages.

The production boasts a meagre scattering of strong funny lines, but it’s clumsily structured, the fantasy sequences prove ineptly tedious and, without depth or development, it’s impossible to care about any of the characters involved or where Miles’s self-destructive disaffection might lead him.

Trafalgar Studios (2), Whitehall, SW1A 2DY Charing Cross tube (0870 060 6632) www.ambassadortickets.com/trafalgarstudios till 6th June ( £22.50, £16 Mondays)