Review

Hard on the heels of Windsor’s production of Alan Ayckbourn’s first and perhaps best-loved play, comes Bill Kenwright’s Theatre-on-the-Green presentation, which has inherited Julian Saxton’s summer garden set, but acquired a brand new director in Salvin Stewart, plus a different cast. The former keeps the action moving; clear cut and progressively more amusing and in the main roles of the attractively mature Sheila and Philip, Eleanor Summerfield and Gerald Flood are ideally cast. It is a pleasure to be able to see one of the stage’s most bubbly and subtle comedy actresses in a part which gives full rein to her unique combination of airiness and sympathy, and interesting to observe the infinite variety of interpretations of which the role is capable, since the late Celia Johnson first created a heroine who is both civilised and caring.

She is the only really sympathetic character out of the four, yet such is the charm and warmth of Gerald Flood’s performance, we overlook the deviousness of the  errant husband and are satisfied wit the happy ending which appears to be in store for both.This is just as well, for the extremely funny twist in the plot which brings the curtain down, hangs a large question mark over the future of the young couple, Ginny and Greg, whose respective lies and gullibility are the raison d’être for the action, which has the young man mistaking the older couple for the girl’s parents. The young people have the difficult task of acting a first scene which establishes that they are lovers, but is not in itself very funny. Worse, they are essentially unlikeable and it requires great skill and personal charm on the part of the actors to make them acceptable. I am sorry to say that Colin Baker and Prunella Gee, at least in the early stages of the tour, lack the requisite charm.