There’s no denying the warmth and humanity which pervade Peter Ustinov's new play. In the character of Beethoven, making a miraculous, once only visitation from beyond the grave to the contemporary family of Stephen Fauldgate, music critic, he fills the stage with a benign wisdom. It's the same spirit which brought a glow to his romantic comedies of the fifties, Love of Four Colonels and Romanoff and Juliet, but this play lacks a clear framework of plot and theme to give it cohesion. It becomes diffused, failing to bind any of the characters, or their problems and personalities, into an interesting dramatic whole.

In the beginning he lays down several interesting paths to explore; the music critic who is himself a failed composer, his relationship with his son who is ambitiously turning out symphonies which are merely facile, and the musical conflict between them which is shown to be an extension of their masculine rivalry within the family for the attention of Mrs Fauldgate, wife and mother who gave up a promising singing career to coddle them. As each in turn brings their problems to the great man it looks as if a serious comedy is emerging. Then he lets it fall away and takes a new direction into summoning up figures from Beethoven's own past and creating dialogues with them which seem to have little or no bearing on the problems of his contemporary characters. They, like us, are left as bemused spectators.

However, even as spectators there are things to enjoy; Ustinov's own powers of easy mimicry in the role of a shaggy German bear of a composer, in Kenneth Mellor's elegantly modern setting for the Fauldgates' London flat, with its muted colour tones, and in the snatches of glorious music finely recorded by Stephen Pruslin. Robin Bailey gives a suave performance as Stephen Fauldgate, man of taste and technique, and in Robert Chetwyn's production the play presents a technically accomplished piece of work.