There was a setback last month for this play inspired by a hit podcast when co-writer and performer Harry Peacock dropped out for health reasons. So how does the show fare now it's on its feet? It certainly sends laughter rolling through the aisles, as two middle-aged divorcees - one nice, one nasty - embroil themselves in ever more baroque misadventures. But over two hours, the stage play does strain against the podcast conceit, which is that Brian and Roger communicate only via answerphone messages. One craves character development, which never really comes.
The plot is circular too, in that it recounts a succession of scrapes into which Roger's good nature allows Brian to entangle him. It begins small-scale, as the pair arrange to watch their Avatar DVD in Brian's student digs, then proceeds to outdo itself ever more garishly. Eager-to-please Roger, pining for his family and stony broke, is coerced to take part in a seance in West Ruislip, an Albanian gambling ring in a Wiltshire abattoir, and finally a donkey trek across China disguised as a UN diplomat. All end violently badly for our hapless hero, while false friend Brian makes himself scarce.
There's pleasure to be had here, in Peacock and co-writer Dan Skinner's ear for the bathos of their characters' compromised lives, in which a regional manager job at Ask Pizza is the zenith of glamour. In Skinner's performance, Roger's pathetic pluck in the face of adversity and his never-quite-strong-enough efforts to resist Brian's manipulation are beautifully played. They do get repetitive though, just as Brian's cartoonish selfishness and cynicism give Simon Lipkin (stepping into Peacock's role) only a couple of dimensions to play with.
None of that's a problem in a comic podcast, but a play needs more. Director David Babani tries to supply it, opening up space around the restricting convention of Brian and Roger's phone messages with impressive digital backdrops (video design by Timothy Bird). In lieu of character progression, events become increasingly manic and overblown as the play progresses, leaving its most fertile dramatic terrain - the everyday poignancy of the two divorcees' lives - in its wake.
Brian & Roger: A Highly Offensive Play is at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London, until 18 December.