[title]
They retired early, to vast houses that their unlucky spawn will never afford, which they don't even bother to live in because they're off shafting the planet with cheap flights to sun 'n' plonk-drenched global beauty spots, now overrun by silver surfers just like them.
Since 2010, when Mike Bartlett's pointed black comedy about a pair of baby boomers premiered at the Drum Theatre in Plymouth, this perma-tanned generation has been pilloried in the papers for enjoying its pensioned, NHS-prolonged life while the rest of us graft and groan. But it's hard to work up outrage when the baby boomers in question – swinging '60s sweethearts Sandra and Kenneth – have most of the best lines and all of the fun.
Bartlett's comedy shows Sandra and Kenneth's lives in three acts. In the first – set in the summer of 1967 – the spectacularly stoned Sandra wafts into student Ken's life on the arm of his uptight older brother Henry, whom she ruthlessly dumps in the name of 'Love, Love, Love'.
In the second, it's booze, booze, booze as '90s Ken and Sandra, married with two kids in Reading, screw other people, their own relationship and their devastated teens with total abandon. In the third act it's 2011 and their 37-year-old daughter Rosie (Claire Foy), single, childless, and renting in London, turns up to demand not love, but some of their money, money, money.
Bartlett is a big talent and, although its arguments seem less fresh than they did two years ago, his play still sparkles in James Grieve's stylish, sexy production.
Victoria Hamilton is its star: she takes Sandra from hippy-chick 19-year-old to monstrous milf, to radiant retiree with extravagant conviction and an amazing voice full of vice, that oozes fag-smoke, wine and unrepentant pleasure.
She and Ben Miles's Ken are a suburban Taylor and Burton – their love hurts everyone around them but it heats up the stage. Bartlett exaggerates the damage they do to their children, probably to compensate for their charisma, but Rosie's critique of her parents sounds didactic and dull despite its accuracy.
In the final scene you're still rooting for the appalling duo as they float away from the demands of their kidults (for whose misfortunes they cannot be wholly blamed) on a cloud of nostalgia and booze-cruise wine, into their extended personal sunset.