Western Front

Bristol New Vic

The advice to BBC executives going down for the third time in a sea of criticism about poor sitcoms is the same as that given to California's 49ers: "Go West, young man." With its national new writing programme Ticket to Write, Paines Plough theatre company has struck a rich seam of talent. Western Front showcases fifteen minute comedies by ten of the writers unearthed by Ticket to Write in the West. Like all goldpanning expeditions, there's a certain amount of silt in the sieve, but there sure are some nuggets of the genuine yellow stiff a-glistenin' in Western Front as well.

Richard Davidson's Grey Matter is one of those nuggets: a surreal situation comedy, a post-Python farce which successfully creates its own distorted picture of the world. The plot is intangible, but the laughs aren't, and Davidson is one of the evening's stars, with a fertile imagination and a big drawer of top-of-the-range one-liners.

Grey Matter shares its local setting with Adrian Sellar's Beaches and Cream: the story of two Bristolian lads desperately trying to act out the Ibiza holiday of a lifetime on the muddy rainswept breaches of Weston-Super-Mare, a touching tale of male inadequacy which is also a finely-crafted piece of downbeat observational comedy.

Kerry Hood's Paj and Pompetry, on the other hand, is far from downbeat, rampaging far past the boundaries of surrealism into total madness. Taking the concept of European institutions rather literally, it depicts the psychiatric treatment meted out to a romantic novelist and a football hooligan in order to eradicate the last vestiges of Englishness in favour of EU homogeneity. Although the piece is more like a Eurosceptic's bad trip than a play, the parade of lunatic snapshots offers a chance for an English audience to revel in their outstanding ability to laugh at themselves.

The outstanding 'find' of the evening, however, is Toby Farrow. We all know that adults can often act like children in relationships. Farrow's playlet Social Grooming is based on the inversion of this: children talking about their nursery romances like adults. So three-year-old Liam repeatedly demands of his girlfriend "But are you happy?", and doesn't want to hear about the boyfriends she had before him. Farrow either has a preternatural ability to write naturalistic dialogue, or a large collection of tape recorders and a bad bugging habit. His scripting is so sharp that some sort of tears before bedtime are guaranteed, as the onlooker is left teetering on the sharp boundary of self-recognition between hysterical laughter and exquisite emotional pain. Farrow has the potential to become an Alan Bennett for the Pepsi generation.

Western Front proves that there are some highly talented comedy writers knocking around the provinces - as well as four actors who can deliver a variety of comic styles and differentiated characters with dexterity and exquisite comic timing. Now that Paines Plough have done the hard work, BBC executives might want to schedule a meeting with Richard Davidson and Toby Farrow soonest. They might be just the tonic that shattered sitcom producers need.

Toby O'Connor Morse

On tour to Octagon Theatre Bolton (11-13 November, box office 0120 452 0661) and Live Theatre Newcastle (15 & 16 November, box office 0191 232 1232)