Satire past its sell-by date

John Godber's satire for the Hull Truck Theatre Company about the thugs who try to keep people out of the mindless disco scene first played this town nearly a generation ago and memory of it now, while dimming and lacking specifics, is of a sense of menace and a few laughs. It proved very popular and has clearly been re-worked piecemeal by its author over the years.

Now, on its 21st anniversary tour, it seems slacker, less funny and much more coarse. The bouncers have lost their sense of physical threat, the satire has lost its edge and the staging, which seemed quite innovative 20 years ago, is now a series of cliches. Where societal comment is made on the banality, the emptiness, the lack of wit of the Friday-night disco-goers, it is now made in speeches that are theatrically underlined and fenced off from the general action (perhaps so that an audience knows that they are supposed to be taken seriously) and the jokes are relentlessly sexual and juvenile.

If Mr Godber wants to continue to comment on a witless society in an entertaining way, he needs to show more wit than was evident in the Gaiety.

The playing by Dicken Ashworth, Zach Lee, Gordon Kane and William Ilkley is technically proficient without ever quite being creatively compelling. To this reviewer it seemed as if the piece had passed its sell-by date. But maybe Mr Godber and Hull truck know better: it received the warmest of receptions from most of a large audience last night.

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