American writers love relationships, and if they can be made off-beat so much the better.  Bernard Slade, whose Romantic Comedy has its premiere at Watford Palace, has already had much success with Same Time Next Year, the story of an unconventional love affair between two people who stay married to other partners.  It would not be true to say that Romantic Comedy is a rewrite but it is a recycling of the same theme, and although it is warming and amusing it is not exactly believable. Like Neil Simon, Bernard Slade believes in putting in plenty of one-liners to paper over the cracks in the plot and to avoid getting into deeper psychology.

Here we have Jason Carmichael, a successful playwright who has deliberately made a major break in his routine – he has split from his male writing collaborator and is just about to get married to a classy girl from a diplomatic family with political ambitions of her own. Only minutes before his wedding he meets another potential collaborator, a dowdy, dumpy schoolteacher in her late twenties, and from then on has to run his two partnerships, professional and marital, in parallel.  Inevitably, when we meet him 10 years later, things have gone wrong.  His wife has left to pursue her political career; the writing partner, Phoebe Craddock, who has of course been in love with Jason all along, is being pressured into marriage by an earnest journalist.

Question: will Jason and Phoebe get together again?  Should they get together again?  Can they get together again?  This kind of dilemma, as Bernard Slade readily acknowledges, is in the great tradition of romantic Hollywood comedy, and you can mentally cast it with your own favourites.  Simon Callow and Pauline Collins do the honours at Watford, and an excellent job they make of it, both being strong on the timing and expression necessary.  Jan Holden has the obvious Eve Arden role of the hard-boiled agent, with affectionate direction by Michael Attenborough and a luxurious setting by Joe Vanek to complete a nostalgic mood.