Sex & Docks & Rock'n'Roll review

Boff Whalley will always be best known as the leader of Chumbawamba, the punk band that drenched the former deputy prime minister, John Prescott. But he also has a productive sideline as a playwright, having developed a distinctive brand of knockabout, politically charged pantomime.

Whalley's method is to focus on a turning point in proletarian history, then add songs and silly sight gags to sweeten the experience. Last year's Riot, Rebellion and Bloody Insurrection focused on the luddite revolt; this time he depicts the lives of some revolting Liverpudlians, holed up in their parlour during a 1960s dock workers' strike.

Ronnie McDermott is an armchair revolutionary who sits watching Z Cars in his soiled underpants while his wife Jean nips out for a cigarette and a crafty read of the saucy parts from Lady Chatterley's Lover. Guitar-toting son Jack, meanwhile, needs a drummer to complete his band, though only dim-witted cousin Barry is available.

Rod Dixon's production for Red Ladder roisters along nicely, like The Royle Family with skiffle. But despite the fact that Dean Nolan's slovenly Ronnie has swallowed a copy of Das Kapital, there's little sense of engagement with the outside world: passing references to the strike, and another son who has been imprisoned, feel tacked-on rather than integral to the plot.

Perhaps it's meant to be an ironic comment on the fact that some workers must first reach the stage of putting on their trousers before taking to the streets. But that seems a curiously apathetic message from the man who wrote the anthemic Tubthumping. "I get knocked down, and I would get up again but can't be bothered right now" doesn't have the same ring to it.

At Balne Lane working men's club, Wakefield (01924 212335), tonight. Then touring until 22 December.

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