Three people are caught up in a midlife crisis with one common realisation: “So little of one's life is one's own”. They are a product of their background, their upbringing and their education. They are moulded and ruled by circumstances and considerations for other people and careers. And none more so than the two tied up in the diplomatic service, where getting asparagus for the annual Queen's Birthday party assumes crisis proportions.

 

Christine and John are tackling this disproportionate problem under the shadow of a crisis in their five-year-old marriage. John's first wife died and Christine gave up a career, well ahead of John’s, to become his wife and is now wondering if her choice was right. Things are grinding to the level of frequent rows over trivia when their former university tutor and, the play reveals, John’s former lover, Libby, unexpectedly joins the diplomatic pair on an official visit to Cairo. Libby’s presence provokes all three into remembering the great expectations and the realisation of the lac lustre prizes they have achieved, already well past the halfway mark of their lives.

 

The three actors, Anna Carteret, Charlotte Cornwell and Will Knightley, do their best for Louise Page’s new play Diplomatic Wives, but the play is just a little too diplomatic to have real impact. The reflections, the deep domestic rows and debates about world problems are true and at times thought provoking, but to really engage an audience, the play needs more emotion, even exaggerated. A spot of the old passion between the former lovers, Libby and John, instead of a hint of a glow. A bit more bitchiness and bitterness in the rows between husband and wife. Feelings stripped bare, so we can care about these characters. Even if in real life this trio would behave in private as if they were at a diplomatic cocktail party, on stage they cannot afford to be that aloof and subtle.

 

Anna Carteret, whose feelings are allowed to show, off stage unfortunately more than on stage, gives a strong and sympathetic performance as this successful career woman who has still got a painful mark, left by the passionate love she shared with John and lost when she chose to marry a domesticated fellow-student, a safer choice for his chosen diplomatic courier. Charlotte Cornwell elegantly shows the basic insecurity of the woman who, despite proving herself through a successful career and ultimately marrying the man she has always wanted, feels inadequate because of her humble background. “Life, Christine says, “is like a paper cup, when you are not containing you are disposable.” Will Knightley has a harder time against these strong female characters with an emotional man whose main fear in life is that any havoc caused could be blamed on him, coasting along easy street with the realisation that he will never achieve his ambition anyway. Lou Stein’s direction puts as much life as possible into a play that has a little movement on any level. Martin Sutherland’s design and Rory Dempster’s lighting effect assures an atmosphere that is likely to linger longer than the lacklustre drama.