Two hours of bickering from a couple of doughnut-shaped crybabies: Middle, at the Dorfman Theatre, reviewed

‘I fink I doan luv yew any maw.’ A marital bust-up drama at the National Theatre opens with a whining Cockney, Maggie, telling her City whizzkid husband Gary that their relationship is over. Gary and Maggie are aspriring underclass types who’ve achieved bourgeois prosperity: John Lewis kitchen, vintage wine rack and a ceramics collection. They have an eight-year-old daughter at a private school where she learns ballet steps and the piano instead of watching road-rage videos on YouTube like a council-house kid. She’s called Annabelle, by the way, and one wonders if Gary and Maggie style themselves ‘Garfield and Margaret’ at the school gate.

The writer, being male, portrays Garfield as a sweet, innocent toiler whose only sin is to neglect the selfish, hard-hearted Margaret. After starting a drippy friendship with a policeman – ‘we kissed’ – Margaret decides to destroy her marriage without a thought for the emotional damage this will inflict on her child.