Breeders, St James Theatre

Four TV favourites star in a comedy about paternity, procreation and parenthood as Breeders comes to the St James theatre. 

Tamzin Outhwaite (East Enders, New Tricks) and Angela Griffin (Coronation Street, Cutting It) play lesbian couple Caroline and Andrea who turn to Andrea’s layabout brother and his girlfriend, played by Nicholas Burns (Nathan Barley, Benidorm) and Jemima Rooper (Atlantis, Lost in Austen) for help conceiving a child.

It strikes us that this is a show that could easily drift towards soap-opera territory, and not only due to the CVs of the actors involved. This is dangerously emotive subject matter and we can only hope that writer Ben Ockrent and director Tamara Harvey have the sense to handle it as such. The play’s comedy genre, however, does fill us with confidence; finding the funny side of a theme such as the formation of a family is a delightfully British and ultimately honest way of telling a story.