There’s an old-fashioned charm about Joel Horwood’s sparky, new-fangled comedy in which rural teenagers Wheeler and Fitz, fishing for crabs in Walberswick, are scooped up by Gemma Soul’s Dani, a posh little sex-pot from London.
A would-be wild night out, with a feast of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll on the chaps’ fantasy menu, is never properly or even improperly enjoyed by this mis-matched trio.

It all ends in predictable detumescence with Dani dismissing the boys, whose friendship terminates, to their “backwater villages”.

Meanwhile, true to traditional form in works about the timeless, youth/middle-age gap, various parents suffer a grey night of the soul, anxious about their kids, glumly aware that fun is a thing of the past, best enjoyed by their aspirationally cool offspring.

Premiered at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, I Caught Crabs was applauded for its “ability to get inside the heads of teenagers”, as though Horwood was some surgical mindreader who pierced contemporary
teenage skulls and made history by deciphering their enigma codes.

Such hyperbole ignores the fact that the playwright cannot have long left his own teenage years.

Horwood has, though, genuine comic flair of the situational and verbal sort. The evening’s pleasure is gleaned from the sight and sound of dimmish, downcast Fitz (Aaron Foy’s fine professional debut) and far smarter, more life-wise Wheeler (Harry Hepple) dancing, drinking and clubbing with Miss Soul’s imposing, minimally dressed, titillator.

Lucy Kerbel’s 70-minute production, with a helpful, static design by Takis and duet of narrators, who take the parental roles, looks under-done on the cheap.
Closes 6 December (020 8743 5050).