REVIEW: Breeders, St James Theatre ✭✭

Breeders: Jemima Rooper, Tamzin Outhwaite and Nicholas Burns. Photo: Manuel Harlan Breeders St James Theatre 13 September 2014 2 Stars

A married lesbian couple. Early 40s. Comparatively Wealthy. Owners of a new home they are doing up. One has just been made a partner in a Family Law legal practice. The other writes "academic" books with titles like "The Artful Lodger". That one has a goofy brother, a photographer, a nice guy, not ambitious and not a dreamer. Just a nice guy. With a girlfriend.

The married women want a child. They want the nice brother's sperm to make it happen. They want the four of them to live happily together in their new, unfinished house while the conception is made a reality.

Such is the set-up for Ben Ockrent's new play, Breeders, which is having its premiere at the St James Theatre in a production directed by Tamara Harvey. It's billed as a new Comedy, but it is not that.

In a lot of ways, it is a piece of new writing which does not know what it is. There are some laugh out loud funny moments, but that happens in Hamlet and King Lear too. There are some deeply affecting moments of insight about relationships and especially siblings, but this is more the territory of naturalistic drama, not comedy.

There are some slapstick scenes, but they don't work really and there is a peculiar linking notion between scene changes which involves singing odd Swedish covers of pop songs or actual Swedish songs - it is jarring and downright irritating. Perhaps it is meant to bring a sense of inherent amusement, of disengaged humour to the proceedings - but it doesn't. It just mystifies.

There is a lot of nonsense presented in the writing: a partner in a law firm stupid enough to present a complicated legal document, unannounced, to the others expecting them to sign it and formalise their parenting arrangements without reading it or getting advice? Clever, articulate lesbians stating that women have a destiny to give birth to children? A desperate sister asks her brother to have actual sex with her wife because the conception procedure is not going well? The nice brother is silly enough to think his girlfriend will cope with not having sex with him for the months the conception process drags on?

Some of it is so stupid as to be offensive; some of it borders on homophonic and anti-femaninst. If it really were a comedy, and the humour had an acrid undertow, there might be some purpose in this. But it is a drama - and an ill-thpught out one that says little of worth and leaves almost no impression.

Tellingly, the best scene of the play does not concern the conception crisis - rather, the aftermath of the funeral of the siblings' mother is the focus of the scene. But it allows the siblings to demonstrate the strength of their bond and the fine line between love and hatred that always exists.

So, not a play which reaches its stated goals: "Whereas we once needed children to help us work the land, nowadays the majority of us don't need kids at all. We just want them, no matter how difficult they are to come by or damaging they are to the planet. Why? And in a world of sperm banks and surrogate parenting, what are the ideal circumstances?" (from Ockrent's note in the programme)

And yet...

It is blessed with four genuinely good performers who elevate the entire proceedings way above the level the writing achieves. All four are spot on, warm, funny, complicated and, above all, human and comprehensible. And silly and spiteful, and just plain dumb at times.

Angela Griffin is wonderful as the lawyer who wants to give birth. Tamsin Outhwaite is a complicated nutcase as the wife/sister who pushes the conception process forward at all costs and who ends up, both pathetically and ridiculously, vomiting into a biscuit tin.

Nicholas Burns is full of charm and energy as the sperm over-supplier, and was the most natural performer of the four. Everyone knows someone like Burns' character. And Jemima Rooper was exceptionally good as the fourth wheel, the girlfriend who suffers the most, but who shows the most love and courage throughout the process.

This quartet of performances is what makes the play moderately enjoyable.

Buy tickets for Breeders at the St James Theatre