Ignore the title: Lisa D’Amour’s play is set not in the former Motor City but in a non-specific large American anytown, in a “first-ring” suburb of 1950s or ’60s-built tract housing. Two thirtysomething couples collide: Ben and Mary, formerly comfortable but now beginning to feel the squeeze following Ben’s redundancy from his bank, and Kenny and Sharon who met in a rehab facility and are not so far removed from the sheepish “white trash” theme they give to one of the quartet’s joint meals. The play is built on a series of such events in the abutting backyards of their respective houses, next door to each other according to the script but back-to-back in Kevin Depinet’s design. Over the course of not quite two hours, we see that the supposedly secure couple have the more brittle relationship, but ultimately matters turn to a more down-at-heel version of the “yuppie nightmare” theme.
    
Director Austin Pendleton reprises his original Steppenwolf production of 2010 with a British cast. Stuart McQuarrie’s Ben is the kind of non-self-starter whose plans of setting up in business for himself are always destined to fizzle out, their domestic fuse, in contrast, is regularly lit and re-lit by Justine Mitchell’s nervy, high-strung Mary. Will Adamsdale has exactly the kind of gee-whiz charm to sustain both Kenny’s relationship with the more downbeat Sharon (Clare Dunne) and the couple’s growing bond with their neighbours.
    
But to what end? Is D’Amour saying, by her incendiary ending, that the old ideal of neighbourliness and community on which such estates rested is now doomed to failure, or contrariwise does the rocky yet cordial journey up to that point affirm it? Are Kenny and Sharon simply the catalysts for a dramatic exposure of Ben and Mary’s deficiencies? Or (d), none of the above? It is not an entirely pointless question. We can, of course, get by without a big neon Final Message. But in that case, we need to feel more invested in the journey towards wherever it is that we are going. To say the piece feels directionless might imply a lack of energy, which is not the case; but it does feel rather like the women’s attempted camping trip, full of small events and simply leading after a couple of hours back to the same backyards.

Written for the Financial Times.