F*** The Polar Bears, theatre review: It’s grim up north London

“I don't like our lives,” says Susan Stanley’s pampered housewife Serena in this new play from Tanya Ronder. She’s an instantly recognisable type — smug but also neurotically competitive. She and husband Gordon (Andrew Whipp) are hoping to trade up from their “ostentatious house in North London”.

He’s a big cheese at an energy company, while she’s into “kind of yoga but not quite”. Both are shamefully wasteful, as highlighted by their Icelandic au pair Blundhilde.

When their daughter Rachel’s toy polar bear goes missing and Gordon’s brother Clarence turns up to do some decorating, the illusion of gilded domesticity collapses. Lights explode, the drains fail, and a mobile phone won’t charge. These are first-world problems, but their sudden onslaught opens up cracks in Gordon’s psyche. Though there are grown-up issues at stake here, the characters are too obnoxious to be interesting — with only recovering addict Clarence (Jon Foster) even vaguely sympathetic. What’s more, the tone of Caroline Byrne’s production is confused. Is this a slice of absurdism, a full-on farce, an earnest portrait of a dysfunctional family, or a topically anti-capitalist provocation? Despite some droll moments, it never lives up to the promise of its confrontational title.

Bush Theatre, until October 24; bushtheatre.co.uk

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