MARK and Sally's marriage is going stale, maybe even awry.

To outsiders, they play the happy family, successful and wealthy, with two lovely children.

He is a composer, she runs the family and the village refurbishment committee, but in reality all is not sweet music and their relationship needs more than a fresh coat of paint and private education for the children.

Mark (James Hornsby) often sleeps in the spare bedroom; his latest musical assignment, writing for a children's TV series, is dull kid's stuff indeed; and this one-time college stud still has the hots for Gill, the university golden girl he never conquered.

Meanwhile, Sally (Gemma Craven, in her Hull Truck debut) is so consumed in fluffing up the nest that her own needs have gone into cold storage.

Mark decides on going Dutch for his 50th birthday, booking a weekend in Amsterdam, not for the sex or drugs but the rock'n'roll of a Bruce Springsteen concert. He and Sally invite mutual friend Gill along for the ride (in all senses of the word, Mark wishes), but unbeknown to him she has all the sex - and drugs - she needs from her latest flame.

Only part way through their sea trip on the Pride Of Hull does Gill (Jackie Lye) reveal she has brought Karl (Rob Hudson) with her, and Yorkshireman Karl is a big, shaven-headed former roadie and porn movie actor. The sea is already at Gale Force Ten, but that is nothing by comparison with the tornado blast of Karl.

Going Dutch is the third of John Godber's Brits Abroad comedies, after April In Paris and On The Piste, and if narrators Mark and Sally fill the traditional Godber roles of British innocents abroad who learn plenty about themselves under foreign conditions, good-time Gill and Karl are a new Godber creature, Brits utterly at home on foreign turf.

Away from Hull Truck's cramped stage in bigger surroundings, the play's deceptively simple drama - played out on two ship chairs, two cars seats and four bikes - grows to share the impact of Godber's increasingly Grumpy Old Men comic demeanour.

Going Dutch, Hull Truck Theatre Company, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday. Box office: 0870 606 3590. West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, April 11 to 16. Box office: 0113 213 7700

Updated: 09:59 Tuesday, January 25, 2005