RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN

The striking title of American playwright Gina Gionfriddo’s latest piece suggests, somewhat bleakly, that happiness never lasts. Which is very much Gionfriddo’s take on a woman’s lot. Having it all forever was never going to be a possibility; a rapturous interlude may be as good as it gets before the grass begins to look greener, as it invariably does.

She gathers three generations of women to explore how their lives and expectations have changed since the 1970s when the F-word – feminism – first got bandied about. And the quick answer is, not much.

Catherine (a foxy Emilia Fox) is an academic and celeb television prof, tottering glamorously in stilettos and spray-on jeans. Until intimations of mortality following her mother’s heart attack suddenly remind her that she is 42, with neither a husband nor children, and when her ma dies, she will have no one to care about her. Home for the summer with her mother, Alice (Polly Adams, whose ability to mix martinis is rather better than her grasp of her American accent), Catherine has hooked up with Don, an ex-boyfriend, who married her best friend, Gwen.

Unlike Catherine, Emma Fielding’s splendidly uptight Gwen didn’t graduate, and became a ‘homemaker’. But with a husband addicted to pot and porn and not earning enough money she, like Catherine, finds the road not taken infinitely more attractive than the cul-desac she’s finished up in.

Alice fuels the lively discussion with cocktails, while Catherine debates genderpolitics and the theories of the anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly (‘the man must lead, and the woman must follow’) as well as those of better-known Betty Friedan, a vigorous supporter of a women’s need for fulfilment beyond the home.

Gwen hits the spot when she says you can outsource pretty much every aspect of homemaking except ‘nesting’ and ‘love’. Wise old Alice advises playing hard to get: ‘No one buys a cow when they can get milk for free.’ Outspoken babysitter Avery (an amusingly humourless Shannon Tarbet) nails a woman’s dilemma: ‘You either have a career and wind up lonely and sad or you have a family and wind up lonely and sad.’

The drama finally gets going, too late, when the telling stops and the showing starts with Catherine and Gwen switching places. As if! It’s fantasy stuff . Never mind, some smart lines keep the drama afloat, not least the one about why men prefer porn: ‘It’s like once you get directions from Google, it’s too much trouble to get out a map.’ Oh dear. If you didn’t laugh, you’d weep.

Until 22 February at Hampstead Theatre, London NW3: 020-7722 9301, www.hampsteadtheatre.com