No Villain – Trafalgar Studios

Arthur Miller could easily be considered America’s greatest twentieth-century playwright were it not for the likes of Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill, contemporaries of Miller, who arguably also deserve that accolade. Miller though has rarely been out of fashion and his plays that so often focus on working men and the problems of industry have struck a particular chord in London’s West End in our current age of austerity. It would be too simplistic to see the almost outrageous success of the Young Vic’s A View from the Bridge – which earned a shed-load of UK awards before adding more at the most recent Tony’s on Broadway and some days I might even admit it was best thing I’d ever seen in the West End – as the cause of a fresh round of Miller-mania but with high profile versions of classics The Crucible at the Old Vic, and the RSC’s Death of Salesman, the appetite for Miller’s work is as strong as ever.

Wonderful then to be offered something entirely new. While rooting around in the archives of the University of Michigan, director Sean Turner unearthed Miller’s very first play written in 1936 when he was at College thrown together in just six days. Not performed for 80 years, No Villain was created solely to win a cash prize to allow Miller to continue with his studies, and duly awarded the play was cast aside. It received its premiere at the Old Red Lion theatre in Angel earlier this year before transferring to the Trafalgar Studios for the next couple of months.

An undiscovered play is like a treasure trove for theatre lovers, one that hints at the genius to come while telling us much more about the author’s process, idea formation and route to success. No Villain is the story of the Simon family and in what would become a commonplace model for Miller, it is concerned with the relationship between a father and his two sons, one doing all the work while the other is the favourite. There’s industrial unrest at the factory preventing the Simons from shipping their fur coats to buyers and Miller’s early flirtation with concepts of Communism are used to amplify both the generational gap between the managerial father and his worker sons, as well as dividing the brothers as Arnie’s intellectualism is pitted against Ben’s practical application of Communist principles at work.

But the play opens with domestic concerns as the family sit around late one night waiting for Arnie to return home from College. He’s told his mother Esther he’ll get the bus or hitch-hike aiming to be home around 11.30pm, but being of a somewhat hysterical nature her anxiety increases with every minute and begins to work herself and her family to a pitch of agitation. Nesba Crenshaw makes Esther permanently panic-stricken and constantly on edge, so even after her family is reunited we see the endless worry about factory finances, her husband’s ability to cope and her ailing father who’s come to stay. Her lot in life is to worry about men while never fully cutting the apron strings for her sons – she seems to have no concern at all for her teenage daughter – and this leads to considerable moments of tension and frustration for them as she pesters and nags them until they crave peace elsewhere.

Patriarch Abe Simon feels like an early draft of Miller’s famous salesman Willy Lowman and the relationship with his sons is similar fraught. Like his wife, Abe is afraid of the future, of progress and even technology which the thread of Communism seems to imply. Part of that fear comes from knowing his business was already ailing before the strike amplified his difficulties and that a time is coming when he will be replaced by a younger generation. In David Bromley’s performance we see that Abe relies heavily on his son Ben who seems the only one capable of practical action, even needing him to work the telephone for him, yet at the same time Bromley shows us Abe’s fear of his children, of their new world view and growing inability to control them. Miller was fascinated by father-son relationships and this one helps us to see that the transition from child to adult is a difficult one for a father to oversee as the son begins to excel and surpass his parent.

George Turvey is excellent as the world-weary Ben trying to balance filial duty with his belief in his greater business sense and the knowledge that the family prefer his brother Arnie. We’re given hints that Ben too was at College once, although whether he completed his studies or sacrificed them to join the family business as his dad wishes is unclear. Turvey’s Ben is also engaged in a constant battle – much like his mother – shouldering both the primary burden of the flailing business as he negotiates with banks and suppliers to save his father from the truth, but also acting a crutch for the family, often taking the lead on decision-making and calming the worries of his more emotional parents. But Ben is also kind and we hear not only of his sympathy for the workers but, in a throw-away moment, his attempts to pay them during the strike, showing that while his family cling avidly to every last inch of the past, Ben is bravely accepting and almost welcoming of a different future.

The rest of the characters are a little thinner and as you could expect from such an early work, Miller’s inexperience is most obvious here. Arnie played engagingly by Alex Forsyth keeps everyone waiting for some time at the start, building up an idea of his importance to the story that is never properly realised. He makes for a great contrast with his brother – brain against brawn – but never feels anything more than a pen sketch of something that should be much deeper given how other characters refer to him. There is a daughter Maxine whose minor appearances involve giggling, being indulged by her father and being sent to another room, and a resident Jewish grandparent who adds to the crush in the Simon household but Miller doesn’t use this third generation to make any further points about changing expectations of masculinity or even the challenges of their faith.

No Villain is understandably a tad incomplete as a play but this production nonetheless proves to be an engaging and insightful 80 minutes. While Miller’s early attempt to blend politics and domestic drama are somewhat cruder than his later work, the genesis of his approach to playwriting and the formation of idea and character are fascinating. Turner’s vision of a family in decline and the economic effects of the Depression Era are not only brilliantly realised but couldn’t be more timely. As a result of the recent referendum, the UK is now on the edge of its own precipice and the as yet unknown consequences will be felt for many years to come. In this context, the staging of Miller’s first play feels astonishingly relevant.

No Villain is at the Trafalgar Studios until 23 July. Tickets are £15-£30. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1

The Deep Blue Sea – National Theatre

Sometimes an actor and a part make perfect sense, and you know in advance that the production you’re about to see is going to be pretty special. It’s different to the thrill of seeing a favourite or particularly famous actor treading the boards; instead it’s the knowledge that the role will particularly suit the specific skills, experience and style of the performer. The announcement then that Helen McCrory was to play Hester Collyer in Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea made perfect sense and may well be her finest stage performance.

McCrory is probably best known (outside the theatre) for her more outlandish roles playing dangerously eccentric characters such as Narcissa Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, while her Medea for the National a couple of years ago was a ball of anger and vengeance. Yet it was a tiny role as a grieving widow in the film version of Ian McEwen’s Enduring Love, opposite a pre-Bond Daniel Craig, which really highlighted her ability to convey conflicted despair – a performance that made her perfect casting as Rattigan’s deeply troubled heroine.

The Deep Blue Sea is Rattigan’s most personal and emotionally charged play, based on the death of his former lover Kenny Morgan who gassed himself in a tiny boarding house in Camden Town after being thrown over by his current partner. A version of this true story was recently performed at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston which used Rattigan’s play as a template without quite matching the emotional pitch of the fictional version.

The Deep Blue Sea opens with Hester Collyer found alive in her flat by her landlady and a neighbour having failed to kill herself when the meter ran out of gas. It’s the 1950s when suicide was a crime and the discovery puts everyone in a difficult moral position. Hester is troubled by the dying embers of a passionate relationship with her younger lover Freddie Page, a former fighter pilot who she met when golfing with her husband Sir William Collyer, a High Court Judge. A well-meaning lodger calls her husband and in the course of twenty-four hours Hester must confront both the men in her life, the overwhelming feelings of love she cannot control, as well as her own belief that life is not worth continuing.

Hester is a sympathetic but not entirely likeable woman who seems to make quite rational and calm decisions about significant matters while simultaneously unable to overcome the feeling she has for Freddie, a feeling they both know he does not return to the same degree. It can be difficult then for an audience to understand a woman who seems so rational and yet so entirely unable to master her own feelings. Yet McCrory makes Hester’s predicament deeply affecting and entirely believable. She begins in an emotionally turbulent state having just tried to commit suicide and as soon as McCrory appears on stage the tension ramps up instantly. It’s not an easy place for an actress to begin, but McCrory is superb allowing Hester to dismiss her actions with curtly polite thanks to all involved – a constant struggle between the expected propriety of her actions and the unquellable depth of her feelings.

And McCrory’s Hester feels deeply, yet retains an inner steel. We see her as both a fragile creature unable to imagine a life without the strong feeling she has experienced with Freddie – the audience may believe as the other characters do that it is only an infatuation but Hester believes it is more than that – yet when offered an escape by her former husband, she is able to rationalise her decision to give up her life to it. “Love is what happened to me” she says and because of it she is no longer the same woman she was in her marriage to Sir William and quite decently feels she could not pretend to love her husband again for all the material comfort it may bring her. McCrory’s fiery passion for Freddie that so often becomes histrionic as she begs him to stay with her is painful to watch and throughout you have the sense she is a dead woman walking, that without him she will allow herself to crumble. It’s a real tour de force performance that is one of the finest things you’ll see on the London stage this year.

Tom Burke’s Freddie may initially seem to be the villain of the piece who has destroyed this woman’s life for a brief physical passion. Yet Rattigan gives us a far more complex character, loading Freddie’s backstory with notions of a post-war world he cannot exist in – “His life stopped in 1940” Hester says and the dull peace after the intensity of combat is something so many men found difficult to adjust to. The failure of the relationship is no more the fault of Freddie than it is of Hester as both are driven by deep character traits that always doomed their 10-month romance. He openly admits he is not someone who can feel as deeply as Hester can and considers himself broken. Although he cares for her more than any other woman he’s ever known, it doesn’t begin to equal her passion for him which ultimately drives them apart. Tom Burke is a superb Freddie, offering moments of callous disgust for Hester’s selfish suicide attempt that would have left him with a lifetime of guilt, with a level of self-realisation that engenders considerable sympathy. Their mutual passion is clear and the chemistry between the two leads if palpable, yet Freddie refuses to let himself be governed by it as Hester does and is always the one to instantly shut down her caresses which Burke suggests are futile now they both know it’s over. It’s again a powerful performance that retains sympathy for Freddie’s motives despite the pain he causes and we see it costs him a great deal to break it off but knows that logic must rule emotion.

There’s no less tension in the duologues between Hester and her husband which have the easy interaction of two people long involved with one another. Peter Sullivan as Sir William initially remains a little aloof seeming neither surprised nor overly concerned by Hester’s actions but it’s abundantly clear in Sullivan’s heartfelt performance that considerable love still exists for his wife and his distance is a protection against further hurt as well as a badge of his class and age. Their talk of old acquaintances he thinks is a way to lure her back, while for her they’re just amusing memories of a life Hester no longer requires. William represents for her a form of salvation she refuses to take where a return to married life would be a betrayal of herself, of the sexuality she has discovered with Freddie and a life of stifled pretending that she won’t renew.

The National has a great reputation when it comes to Rattigan and a production of After the Dance in 2010 was one its biggest success of the last decade – the lead played by a pre-Sherlock Benedict Cumberbatch in what remains, in my view, his finest stage role. Here director Carrie Cracknell has created a tense and emotionally wrought atmosphere that ebbs and flows like the tide, and perfectly pitched throughout, while Tom Scutt’s beautiful semi-sheer design in shades of sea bluey-green allows you to see the lives happening beyond the walls of Hester’s flat giving context to her own somewhat self-indulgent struggle and the many other people just getting on with it. This is not quite the shabby lodging house of other versions, but a small and tasteful place which reinforces Hester’s slight snobbery – it’s not pure poverty to us but to her is a few degrees below the comfort she enjoyed with Sir William.

This production of The Deep Blue Sea is the best thing the National has done in years and a wonderful piece of theatre – it’s intense, consuming and deeply moving. Helen McCrory’s astonishing central performance is an impeccable piece of casting and a role that suits her skills perfectly. Her Hester is simultaneously sympathetic, pitiable, frustrating, fragile and strong, and if you’re not blinking back the tears by the end of this devastating performance then you have a harder heart than me. Rattigan has been given a new lease of life since the centenary celebrations in 2011 and in this beautiful production we are reminded just why he remains such a wonderful playwright and how sublime theatre can be when a talented actor meets the perfect part.

The Deep Blue Sea is at The National Theatre until 21 September and tickets start at £15. The production also features in the National’s 1pm Friday Rush scheme selling tickets for £20. There will be an NT Live Screening of this production on 1 September in local cinemas.

Richard III – The Almeida

Richard III may well be the most frequently performed Shakespeare play of the last few years, seemingly spawning more productions than Hamlet. Given a new lease of life after the discovery of his body in a Leicester car park in 2012, we’ve seen the lead role played by Kevin Spacey at the Old Vic, Martin Freeman in a Jaime Lloyd version, a wonderful promenade production by Iris Theatre Company in St Paul’s church yard and Mark Rylance at the Globe. The Faction opened 2016 with its innovative version at The New Diorama starring Christopher York and a few weeks ago the BBC screened its version with Benedict Cumberbatch. Now at the Almeida, Ralph Fiennes assumes the role of Shakespeare’s most controversial villain.

Fiennes is having an incredible run of form on stage; he’s taken on three mammoth roles in major productions with a combined stage time of well over 11 hours. Starting with Man and Superman last year at the National, The Master Builder at the Old Vic in February – both shamefully overlooked by the award panels – and now Richard III for the Almeida; it’s an impressive commitment to theatre that in little more than a year has been incredible to watch. This performance feels like the end of a trilogy of works that have examined the ambiguous nature of power and its ability to release the inner strands of villainy and self-absorption disguised by a charming manner and degree of the subject’s star power. While Man and Superman’s John Tanner was the least dangerous, his vanity led naturally into Fiennes next role as Ibsen’s Halvard Solness the eponymous master builder who sacrifices everything for fame, and ultimately then to the dark and dangerous charisma of Richard III who covets greater status and will do anything to get it.

The Almeida’s production opens with the archaeological dig in that Leicester car park with forensic officers searching for remains in an open grave where they find the skull and curved spine of Richard. It’s a poignant opening that references both the ongoing contemporary interest in Richard’s story, and Shakespeare’s own version of it, as well as the burden of mortality which hangs heavy over this interpretation. Though mostly covered in a retractable glass platform, the grave is visible throughout reminding the audience that Richard will cause many deaths on his path to the throne – and reversing the soldier-ornaments concept from And Then There Were None, skulls appear on the back wall with each fatality – but also that for all his machinations this too will be Richard’s own fate. In an interesting directorial decision, at key moments the glass is retracted and characters move around the open grave and occasionally die into it implying perhaps that these decisions seal Richard’s own fate.

It’s a contemporary design using a palette of sombre black to reflect the constant mourning of the court, with touches of monarchical gold. Jon Morrell’s costumes and Hildegard Bechtler’s set offer a modern yet timeless element to the story, combining a minimalist simplicity with hints of cold stone palaces and Midlands battlefields. A swinging chain mail curtain separates the throne from the grave, a potent symbol of the role of war in the creation and destruction of medieval monarchy which reflects the play’s own concern with the grieving royal widows whose fortunes were decided in combat. More perhaps could be made of the military influence on this society in other areas of the design to really emphasise the years of brutality, suspicion and devastation that have afflicted Yorkist England.

Fiennes’s Richard III is a monstrous combination of magnetism and psychopathy that wins the audience’s interest early on. He begins by letting us in on his plans and as he wheedles his way towards the crown, his methods become increasingly dangerous and sadistic. But charm comes first and as we see in only the second scene language is his initial tool to convince the Lady Anne to marry him and then winning the various council members to his will. Later still we see his physical strength that despite his deformity, is sufficient to overpower and subdue Anne and Queen Elizabeth as well as prove a worthy opponent in battle.

The curved spine held up by the archaeologists at the start is mirrored in the prosthetic Fiennes wears which makes the ridges of the backbone occasionally visible through his costume. His right arm is clamped to his side, the left shoulder built up and one foot slightly turned in, but this is no panto representation and Fiennes absorbs Richard’s deformity into a fuller perspective of the character – Richard rarely draws attention to his differences and Fiennes subtly uses that to imply the powerful way in which Richard sees himself, as the same or better than other men. The intensity of performance is a joy to watch and each of his soliloquies are magnificent; he has a great feel for the verse and a stage presence that creates a very different energy and vitality when he’s there. Fiennes in full flight is really something to see, and as his Richard explodes with anger and recrimination, as well the more sensitive and troubled moments of conscience, it’s thrilling to immerse yourself in such a high calibre performance.

A number of other actors also stand out, particularly Finbar Lynch as Richard’s co-conspirator the Duke of Buckingham who helps to work the council and arranges a few deaths that propel Richard to the throne before bulking at the murder of the Princes. Scott Handy has a sensitive and moving role as the innocent Duke of Clarence, Richard’s brother and first victim that provides a stark contrast with our protagonist, while Aislin McGuckin is a fiery Queen Elizabeth who charts the descent from ultimate power to destruction really well. Her lengthy scene in the second part of the play with Fiennes in which he persuades her to let him marry her daughter is one of the best in the production, full of tension and bitterness that builds to what will be a controversial climax, although one which brings fresh perspective to this scene and will be a talking point on the way home.

With five shows under its belt, the Almeida’s production is still in preview so a lot can still change, and with three further performances before Thursday’s press night there are a few things the show could do to make even more of an impact. Shakespeare’s Wars of the Roses plays have a huge cast of characters to keep straight so it’s easy for an audience to be confused by the various Dukes and members of the clergy, and too often in the group scenes a lot of characters are dotted around the stage and seemingly not reacting to the speaker. You can see that Fiennes’s Richard is constantly thinking, whatever is being said the wheels are turning in his mind and his blood is boiling, and some of the other characters need to give more thought to how they feel about what’s being said and what it means for them. This would help to differentiate some of the secondary roles and give greater nuance to the shifting factions of the court.

Not much has been cut and with a first half coming in at 1 hour, 45 minutes, the show feels a little sluggish at first and there are a number of scenes in which various men sit around a table politicking so perhaps there’s scope to inject some dynamism in the staging. More thought too could be given to the role of the women to whom Shakespeare has given considerable focus but are not yet being used to make a forceful point either about the consequences of warfare in this period or as the only people able to see through Richard’s veneer of politeness. It’s a rare treat to see Vanessa Redgrave on stage (as Queen Margaret, the widow of Henry VI) and she delivers her lines beautifully but it’s not yet clear where the character is pitched – is she mad or do the others only think so? Likewise Joanna Vanderham’s Lady Anne has a single shouty pitch which isn’t capturing the pawn-like nature of the character or the lot of marryable highborn women to be treated like possessions. Phoebe Fox in the recent BBC version was a moving Lady Anne, while Kristin Scott Thomas in the McKellen film played her as a deadeyed drug addict detached from it all, so Vanderham needs to find an angle. Scott Thomas was actually in the audience and would be a good shout for the yet unannounced role as Cleopatra opposite Fiennes in the National’s forthcoming Anthony and Cleopatra.

Finally there are a couple of themes that are hinted at but never fully realised. Lord Hastings (an excellent James Garnon) is the only person with a mobile phone which he uses to impart news, but this device isn’t utilised (and could be) in other places. If the director, Rupert Goold, is making the point that only Hastings is engaged in this way then we need the other characters to respond to that, or having other people bored and texting may add to the big scenes which currently lack reaction. And while I like the car park opener there’s only a hinted return to that at the very end which feels a little incomplete as a comment on modern engagement, maybe we need to see the bones again or have some kind of re-interment to close the story.

Regardless of these small changes, this production of Richard III is fascinating, powerful and compelling. With a reawakened interest in this period of history, audiences are coming to this play with greater knowledge of the story and looking for an intelligent approach to one of Shakespeare’s darkest works. Fiennes is the life-blood of this production, creating a loathsome, terrifying and engaging villain who easily outmanoeuvres those around him and keeps the audience on the edge of their seat throughout. As an exploration in human morality Fiennes’s recent roles have taken us from a bachelor afraid of marriage to an emotionally damaged man avenging himself on the world, reminding us what a truly powerful performer he is.

Richard III is at The Almeida Theatre until 6 August. The show has some seats available from £10 but day seats are available from 11am at the box office or via lottery. There will also be the first live screening from The Almeida to cinemas on 21 July.  

How the Other Half Loves – Theatre Royal Haymarket

Every year without fail at least one Alan Ayckbourn revival arrives in the West End, and it’s always something to look forward to. Having written around 80 full length plays, I’ve only managed to see a relatively tiny fraction of them and with Ayckbourn developing new work every year at his Scarborough base we may never entirely catch-up. His greatest skill is using a comedy shell to present the small domestic sadnesses that plague everyday lives, of people trapped and unable to escape their circumstances giving considerable pathos to his work that lingers long after you’ve stopped laughing.

This balance of comedy and gentle suffering is more pronounced in Ayckbourn’s later works, as his story-telling and character development grew, and a number of notable modern comedians have been drawn to his plays in recent years including Catherine Tate in Season’s Greetings at the National Theatre and Reece Shearsmith in Absent Friends at the Harold Pinter Theatre. The latest Ayckbourn revival is How the Other Half Loves at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, one of his earliest works that while providing plenty of farcical fun, doesn’t quite have the same depth of character as more recent productions.

How the Other Half Loves is a classic crossed-wires comedy involving three couples. Frank and Fiona Foster are a middle class couple in a classic home, married for years and sunk into a gentle frustration with each other. Fiona is having an affair with the younger Bob Phillips who works for Frank but to cover her tracks she lies about counselling her friend Mary Featherstone whose husband William (who also works for Frank) is cheating on her. Meanwhile Bob’s wife Teresa suspects his infidelity but is told that Bob has been helping William who’s discovered Mary is cheating. In the midst of all this, the innocent Featherstone’s appear at both homes for dinner unaware they are the subjects of an elaborate dupe.

It’s a classic and skilfully performed farce that makes good use of its all-star cast. With both the Foster and Phillips home merged together brilliantly by the set-designer, the action flows so smoothly that you never have to question whose home you’re in. Everything from the walls to furnishings represent both residences in a considerable attention to detail that reflects the different classes, often in one item – for example in Act One the 3-seater sofa is 2 seats Foster and 1 shabbier seat Phillips, which becomes entirely Foster in Act Two and completely reversed in Act Three. And of course the relevant characters only ever sit or move to the furniture that belongs to their home, swerving round each other seamlessly as scenes intersect.

Leading the cast is a fabulous performance from Nicholas Le Prevost as Frank, a dithery and easily distracted man who infuriates his wife with his forgetfulness and interference. Even leaving the house is a palaver for Frank, yet of all the characters he is the one with the kindest heart and for whom the audience has the greatest sympathy. Although it is his instance on confronting the Featherstones that leads to much of the ensuing farce, Frank is someone that is caught up in a situation not really of his making and in Le Prevost’s skilled blend of comedy and tragedy you feel every ounce of hurt as the truth emerges.

Jenny Seagrove is Frank’s wife, a hardnosed Celia Johnson-type looking for a bit of excitement with a younger man. Although you never see them together it’s hard to imagine what on earth she would have in common with Bob and that relationship seems unconvincing. Yet you can see what drove her to an affair in what is a very domestic and limited existence. This is something common to the other women in the play as well as both Teresa and Mary are essentially housewives with considerably fewer opportunities than their husbands – the play was written in 1969 and set in the 70s here when this was a more common lot for women.

Gillian Wright and Matthew Cottle (who happily seems contracted to be in all Ayckbourn) are the reserved Mary and William Featherstone who enjoy a lot of the comedy as the farcical plot ramps up. Their set-piece moment is when the dinner-parties are run concurrently so that the couple are seated at 2 cross-shaped tables and swivel in the seats to participate in each event. It’s hilarious and skilfully done as we conjoin the events of two evenings, and considerable credit should go to Wright and Cottle for making this very difficult scene a seamlessly performed joy. They never lose their cool and you know exactly which evening it is at every moment – a difficult task for the actors, so for them to have made it seem effortless is a real achievement. But it’s also clear that they are more than just the patsies in this set-up with their own marriage issues hinted at through William’s bullying nature and Mary’s bid for authority that this builds up to.

The Phillips couple are the least successful in the play. Their exuberant passion is the only thing keeping them together, so while they fight incessantly, they have an overwhelming need for each other that overrides infidelity and irritation. They just lack any real depth or sympathy, which is partly the fault of the writing but also they try a little too hard to make it funny. Teresa is a harassed mother to a permanently unseen but chaotic baby and gets no support from her boozy husband Bob. Tamsin Outhwaite is a fiery Mrs Phillips pursuing social causes and yelling endlessly at her husband, but it’s a bit of a one note performance that never quite reveals her purpose. Likewise Jason Merrells as Bob is self-involved, brash and a bit of a pig – seemingly an unlikely romantic choice for Fiona, and we never really learn anything about him.

How the Other Half Loves received almost universally good reviews and it certainly deserves them in many ways, yet seeing this recently I couldn’t help but wonder if it had lost some of its fizz since press night. Some actors say it’s best to see a show near the end of the run when the characters have developed considerably since the early days (I like a preview personally so I can make up my own mind before the critics) but I wonder whether the same can be said for this type of comedy where in the early shows the spontaneity feels less rehearsed but by the time they’re several weeks or months in, some of the spark has gone. Perhaps too it is the cavernous space of the Theatre Royal Haymarket which makes Ayckbourn’s intimate domestic dramas feel a little lost. Ayckbourn’s Scarborough theatre is a small in the round space which brings the audience closer to what’s going on which London’s proscenium arches can never do. The Old Vic’s The Norman Conquests worked so well because of the transformed in the round space they created, but Ayckbourn often feels lost in the bigger venues – maybe not for those in the stalls but in the upper circle you’re considerably distanced from events.

Nonetheless an annual outing to at least one Ayckbourn is a real treat and as they’re performed so rarely on the fringe, seeing them in a big West End space is better than not seeing them at all. There is plenty to enjoy in Alan Strachan’s version not least the glorious design and first rate performances from Le Prevost, Wright and Cottle in particular. With Ayckbourn’s characters, relationships are never quite what they seem and while his second play lacks the pathos and development of his later works, it has plenty of comic entertainment and technical genius to make up for it.

How the Other Half Loves is at the Theatre Royal Haymarket until 25 June. Tickets start at £15. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1.