Having made several trips on the Hull to Rotterdam ferry I knew I had to get along and see Going Dutch. Anyone who has been on this journey with, as one of the characters points out, 14 hours to fill will know that for some the incentive to drink is powerful and then there's the on-board entertainment. This could well provide a good setting for comedy and drama and Godber does not disappoint.

Seeing the set as I took my seat, my heart sank. It looked as though this was going to be very stagey but I was soon proved wrong. Using very simple but very stylish props the four players manage to convince us we are on the boat, then in a car and in Amsterdam as they act out this drama about mid-life crisis.

Karl (Rob Hudson) is nothing like any of Gill (Jackie Lye)'s previous men.

Mark (James Hornsby), a composer who once dreamed of being Philip Glass but now does theme tunes for children's programmes, is on the North Sea ferry with his wife Sally (Gemma Craven). Soon we are taken in flashback to a much stormier journey a couple of years earlier when Mark was marking his 50th birthday by a trip to Amsterdam to see Bruce Springsteen in concert. Old college friend Gill (Jackie Lye) accompanies Mark and Sally but Gill quickly reveals she has brought along her new boyfriend Karl (Rob Hudson) and assures Mark and Sally he's nothing like her previous men.

As soon as they see Gill's latest the couple are quick to agree - he's a well-built 48-year-old skinhead. An ex-con (Gill has been doing some prison teaching) and a former part-time porn star, Karl threatens to show them his Amsterdam.

Are Mark (James Hornsby) and Sally (Gemma Craven) the couple who have it all?

All this gives rise to some well-timed comedy delivered, in Karl's case at least, using some suitably earthy language as what had promised to be a great trip descends into something of an ordeal. There is no way Mark and Karl are going to get on, but Karl also reminds Mark of the hell of childhood when kids used to p*** on him as he came away from the piano teacher's house. We also discover that Sally does not think her marriage to Mark has been a paradise. As the two couples get increasingly drunk, so the sea gets rougher.

An unfortunate car journey, some interesting cake-eating on Sally's part and an aborted visit to a live sex show all lead to a quarrel between the two couples and to Sally and Mark re-evaluating what they have had together. Looking back, despite their mutual antagonism, Mark acknowledges he has to some extent been "liberated" by Karl - you'll have to go and see the play to find out why.

Excellent timing and quite a few jokes along the way make for an entertaining evening. Gemma Craven, who made her name as an actor with the celebrated TV series Pennies From Heaven, gets both most of the laughs and most of the audience's sympathy. James Hornsby is suitably dry as Mark. Jackie Lye gives the fun-seeking Gill considerable vitality. Rob Hudson gives the most unsympathetic character in the play an added edge suggesting that at times we should think a bit more about the accusations Karl is throwing at Mark.

But what of the voyage as a whole? At the end of the evening the couple who have it all may have grown wiser but they are still the couple who have it all. I enjoyed Going Dutch but I don't think it will stay with me all that long - until, that is, I next step aboard a North Sea ferry.

Chris Verguson

Going Dutch is at the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield until Saturday March 12th, and then continues its tour.