Weekend Breaks – review

There is less social mobility in the UK in 2012 than there was in the 1960s and 70s, so John Godber's 1997 play about Martin , a teacher turned would-be writer, who realises the gulf between himself and his parents on a weekend break in Whitby, looks like a period piece. Godber knows about the ties that bind and the things that tear us apart: he is himself the hugely successful writer-son of a miner. In this new touring version, the show is couched as a memory play, with the middle-aged Martin (now a successful standup comedian – unlikely, given his material) looking back on that disastrous weekend. It pits the "make-do" attitudes of working-class Len and Joan against the aspirational Martin, who is separated from his middle-class wife, but nonetheless sees himself as above a holiday in Malaga – his parents' favourite destination. Pip Leckenby's clever, simple design means the whole play appears to take place on a black-and-white negative strip of film. Godber is an ingenious writer who knows how to hit all the right buttons. But the play's over-simplifications, which suggest that working class is honest and good, and the middle classes don't know how to enjoy themselves, sell it short – and the reliance on toilet jokes (there is a running gag in which Len pronounces Mijas as "my arse") eventually wears thin. The play is at its best when it provides real detail ("hit by a Mothers Pride van in the Asda car park"), but a lack of genuine warmth in the writing and the performances often makes the characters seem mean and miserable rather than engaging.