INSPIRED by his own boating experiences, Stewart Howson explores family relationships and the English abroad as they sink or swim on a flotilla sailing holiday in Greece.

The play's full title, Quay Moments (In A Relationship), indicates that behind that initial pun there is a more serious undercurrent, one that will grow stronger as a storm brews on the sea and between partners, family and package-holiday companions.

Howson brings together disparate characters who have booked a sailing trip with Sure Sail and their instructors, super-confident Click (Kim Evans) and Neil (Peter G Reed), whose mobile phone is always hot with calls from his untrusting partner back home.

There are three boats: on the first are sailing novices the Bell family from Yorkshire; trad dad Mike (Stephen Wedd), quiet mum Pauline (Jackie Fielding) and their inhibited teenage son Trevor (Alan Park). On the second are regular sailors Keith ((Reed) and Alyson (Fielding) from the North East.

On the third, jack-the-lad Jack (Park), is a yuppie puppy with hi-tech gear where a heart should be; chirpy Hayley (Evans), who likes to call everyone 'Babes' and is out for a man; Les (Wedd), with his annoying laugh; and Sally (Fielding), a taciturn Brummie with a sting in her tail. Into the fray will come Irina (Rachel Kirk), an illegal immigrant desperate for a new life; an irritable fisherman (Wedd), and a harbour policmeman (Park, as an ex-pat Aussie).

Those who know Howson's work, from the Alnwick company NTC or his earlier days at York Theatre Royal with These Things Do Happen, will be aware he is a playwright fashioned in the Bretton Hall tradition of imagination ruling over financial limitations. Like John Godber in Up'n'Under, he uses a small cast to play multiple roles in an ensemble piece that marries a strong physical dimension to mentally-taxing journeys to self revelation.

In the past, Howson has had talking tractors and philosophical sheep in his plays. Here the dialogue is between humans and the sea, as Howson's comedy drama transforms gradually from comedy to drama.

For all the cast's navigational skills, creating three ships from Cath Young's set at any one time, Gillian Hambleton's production has to take too much baggage on board, as Howson crams in issues of infidelity, imprisonment, drugs, barren couples, IVF and immigration.

NTC Touring Theatre Company presents a second show, A J Cronin's The Stars Look Down, on Tuesday 28th at 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 658338.

Updated: 12:47 Tuesday, October 28, 2003