The title of David Eldridge's inconsequential, soap-operatic drama of turbulent love and misunderstanding in the family is both an acronymic allusion to the Cold War theory of Mutually Assured Destruction and Mum and Dad.
With heavy-handed neatness, the grim state of the world is matched by marital mistakes and mayhem in Eldridge's Romford living room.
The play's central character, John, the bright 11-year-old son of a market trader, is obsessed by the scary stalemate of East-West relations. He feels anxiety about the marital tension and inattention that characterises his parents' marriage.
Jonathan Fensom's set design is awash with contemporary colour and detailing. Eldridge's stage directions are so irrelevantly precise that I suspect he must be dredging up personal recollections.
The year is 1984 and Margaret Thatcher and her American soulmate in the White House have put their ideological faith in the balance of terror. John plays a war-game of soldiers on a map of Europe and in an antique piece of stage business hides in a cardboard box.
He eavesdrops on a vicious nocturnal war of words and clash of bodies. Jo McInnes's insubstantially characterised Alice has lost sexual interest in Lee Ross's forlorn, asthmatic Kelly and confesses to spending a single night with Gerald Lepkowski's fellow-trader Luigi.
All three adults are thinly characterised in Hettie Macdonald's production and John's eavesdropping appears to make less impact on him than does his viewing of the apocalyptic television drama Threads.
Eldridge captures or recaptures with poignant, comic astuteness the fears of a sharp little boy whose imagination works too hard and too well: the selfassured Lewis Chase makes a pleasing though sometimes vocally insecure stage debut.
He is particularly effective when owning up to his eavesdropping and desperate to comfort his parents.
Unfortunately, M.A.D loses its way and sense of purpose. A final scene in 2004 reunites Luigi and the university educated, loveless, adult John (Daniel Mays). Their encounter, which lacks resolution, is gratuitously swathed in sentimental recrimination and selfpity.
Until 22 May. Information: 020 7610 4224.
