It's preferable to be optimistic about theatrical regime changes, but the Bush's new artistic director Madani Younis doesn't get off to the most promising start with Lee Mattinson's crude play.
A time-shifting series of pitched battles between the female members of an unhappy Newcastle family, it's indebted to Charlotte Keatley's far superior 'My Mother Said I Never Should', and its broad humour recalls Jim Cartwright. But it lacks tenderness and complexity; Mattinson's dialogue crams a string of coarse one-liners into the mouths of characters to whom his attitude is more sneering than sympathetic.
The action takes place in a Skegness Butlins chalet on landmark occasions that should be celebratory, but descend instead into confrontation and cruelty. The unpleasantness is relentless – until the writing takes a dive into equally unappealing sentimentality.
Younis's slightly clunky staging is rescued by stellar performances from Gillian Hanna as miserable Nana and Laura Elphinstone as a gawky daughter unable to please her poisonous mother. But the piece leaves a sour taste. Better things are, surely, to come.