Various things are missing in Barney Norris's new play, set in Thatcher's suburbia in the bedroom of two brothers. The army father has died. The mentally adrift mother – Norris's best dramaturgical touch – is present only as a voice the boys call downstairs to but which we never hear.
Meanwhile university-bound Luke watches, first with irritation, then with protective anger, as younger brother Andy flails about for a purpose in life. It's an earnest, well-acted rendering of a sibling relationship from which the odd poignant or funny line emerges.
But as the action hops jarringly between two time frames in key with the brothers' crude Top 40 mixtapes, the main thing missing here is theatrical energy. Boredom is a timely political issue about which young Oxford theatre company Up In Arms may have more to say. But, like Andover in the '80s, there's just not enough going on here.