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Anyone who has ever taken part in a hideous corporate bonding exercise will be able to relate to Tim Firth’s Nineties play. It’s a vision of a very modern kind of hell, in which four men from a Salford water company end up stranded on an island in the Lake District.
The cast contains big names. Neil Morrissey is Neville, the group’s genial leader. It’s a strangely colourless role, to which Morrissey brings as much warmth as he can. Then there’s Robert Webb from Peep Show — convincing as Roy, an earnestly religious type who is keen on birdwatching and has a history of mental illness.
Miles Jupp is insecure Angus, whose rucksack is full of the sort of fancy kit you might just about need for a month-long trip into the Brazilian rainforest. But the most imposing character is Gordon, a relentlessly sarcastic misanthrope. Adrian Edmondson captures his toxic sourness and flair for belittling others.
The performances are solid and there’s an impressively lush set by Robert Innes Hopkins — complete with pools of dirty water for the cast to splash around in. Yet Angus Jackson’s revival can’t obscure the fact that the play is inherently static. What’s more, three out of the four characters are unsympathetic and the other one is unmemorable.
While there are some decent gags, credibility is strained as the material grows darker. For instance, given Angus’s astonishing armoury of gadgets and his uptight demeanour, it’s far from plausible that he’d have embarked without a fully charged mobile phone (and maybe even a spare battery).
Ultimately, though, the problem is that the play feels flabby. The idea would sustain an episode of a sitcom, but stretched beyond two hours it seems much too thin.
Until January 3 (0844 871 7623, atgtickets.com/shows/nevilles-island)
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