Electricity, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds

A sparky dust-sheet drama

Do not even consider going to see Electricity at the West Yorkshire Playhouse if you are having, or are about to have, any building or decorating done about the house. Your stomach will knot, your heart sink and your spirits droop at the sight of these three builders supposedly creating a "quiet space" in a young woman's home.

Do not even consider going to see Electricity at the West Yorkshire Playhouse if you are having, or are about to have, any building or decorating done about the house. Your stomach will knot, your heart sink and your spirits droop at the sight of these three builders supposedly creating a "quiet space" in a young woman's home.

Katherine's fancy is for fountains, Eastern-influenced wall beading, a statue of Ganesh and yellow walls. The job, reckoned to take two weeks, has taken 17 and the dustsheets are still out on Ruari Murchison's stylish set. From the audience's warm reaction to Murray Gold's sparky dialogue, I guess that many people have been here.

Despite the fact that the characters seldom stretch beyond caricature, the director Ian Brown draws out the bright tensions of the play and is rewarded with high-voltage performances all round. Electricity was originally an award-winning radiodrama, which explains why there are so many words and so little action. There's some cracking dialogue as Gold sets out to explore the gulf between how much builders actually achieve and why they're vilified for all the problems they create.

The workmen aren't even in harmony with each other. Leo (Patrick Brennan) is the solid foreman, trying to get his two mates motivated. It's an uphill struggle against Jakey's reluctance to do anything that might resemble lifting a finger - unless it's to turn the pages of his red-top newspaper or lift a mug to his lips. Christopher Eccleston - in one of his last theatre appearances before he departs for another time and space as Doctor Who - is suitability infuriating as Jakey, the mouthy wide boy with a gash in his face for a silly smile, cold eyes and a thick skin.

His son, Bizzy (Oliver Wood), has a lot of problems but also a photographic memory, which was fully loaded with film when he stole a look at Katherine's private diary. By this point, they've all lived in uncomfortably close proximity for too long, liberties have been taken and tempers have been frayed. When Katherine's frustration finally boils over, she gives vent to her anger in a blistering monologue. Determined not to judge or condemn the workmen, she tries to rationalise why she feels as she does, comparing their penetration of her personal space to a sort of rape. They're baffled, she's embarrassed.

It's way over the top, of course, but kind of funny, too, especially when Katherine is played so sympathetically by Sophie Ward. When her uptight little smart aleck of a fiancé, Michael (Andrew Scarborough), turns up, he too unburdens himself to the workmen in a highly improbable way, egged on by Jakey's seeming sixth sense. One of the best moments in the play is when Leo hands back the bribe that Michael has given him, just before insulting him. Builders have their pride, too.

It's left to Bizzy to provide the farcical denouement - but to expose it would be to spoil the play. Let's just say that Katherine has not seen the last of the builders yet. If this makes it sound like a soap omnibus, that's not so far from the mark - but I don't think I could bear another episode.

To 24 April (0113-213 7700)