Money for old soap

Simon Stephens has managed to unearth and recycle a refuse-load of elderly cliches about the communication failures and sexual repressions, the guilts and wistful longings of English family life.
That the National and Royal Exchange theatre should jointly commission and produce a play of such resounding banality strikes me as an alarming waste of money and opportunity.

Unsubsidised fringe theatres, after all, without a fraction of the National's resources or subsidy, regularly tackle subjects and issues of fresh or topical relevance.

On the Shore of the Wide World, which is significantly cut into 42 often fragmentary, quasi-televisual scenes, and four "parts" would pass as a very dry run for the first episodes of a lower-middle-class Channel 4 family soap opera set in Stockport. All predictable human life is here, from the secretly drinking and smoking grandfather, Charlie, via middle-aged parents, Peter and Alice, whose sex-life has fizzled out, to their teenage sons, one of whom, Alex, tries his hand at sex with his girlfriend Sarah and soon takes her off to London.

Each part of the play is named after a particular character, though the emphasis proves more theoretical than real. A family catastrophe casts unbelievably short shadows. Parents and grandparents betray a sense of opportunity lost. Alice and Peter, to differing degrees,

teeter on the verge of unbelievable romance but withdraw as nobly as the couple in Brief Encounter. The play's two fathers clam up with their sons. Psychological insight goes missing.

Sarah Frankcom's production is played in the round on an almost bare stage, whose floor is a map-montage of Stockport, while above the action hangs a star-studded globe to represent a world of untapped potential. This staging turns out to be unfairly useless, since the audience cannot be aware that Stephens gives precise locations for each scene. Steven Webb as Peter's charmingly individual younger son, Nicholas Gleaves as Peter himself and David Hargreaves's furtive grandad bring some conviction to this long-winded, clapped-out family saga.

Until 23 August. Information: 020 7452 3000.