Christopher Isherwood's novel, A Single Man, in which the author examined three themes, two of them very personal, homosexuality and being an Englishman in California, and one which affects us all, becoming middle-aged, is cleverly and movingly adapted by Michael Michaelian which quite coincidentally provides Alec McCowen with his best role for several years.  Though suffused with an obvious autobiographical element, Isherwood in a sense stands outside himself, taking as his central character George, an Englishman who has settled in California as a college teacher, enjoying life in his impermanent landscape with his lover Jim, who makes furniture and looks after a menagerie of assorted animals. They are a couple who are happy and comfortable with each other, with few friends, save for the Englishwoman, Charley, who married a GI from whom she is divorced and has a troublesome son.

But Jim is killed in a car crash while on his way to visit his folks in Ohio and George is now alone at the age of 58, still liking his work but facing an empty future with brave humour. The play is simple - George remembering incidents from the past, considering options for the future, which might even involve returning to England with Charley to run a pub in the Cotswolds, being tempted by one of his male students who is uncertain about his own sexuality and envies George's lifestyle, but finally deciding to stay where he is, preserving the memory of Jim, but hanging loose and staying young at heart, doing his best to ignore the lesson of experience.

It is a curiously heart-warming and affirmative piece, with a splendid performance from Alec McCowen as a man who is both distant and approachable, private and public, a man who never quite reveals his inner core to others. Sympathetically directed by Waris Hussein, in a serviceable setting by Saul Radomsky, it also has one superb supporting performance from Rosemary Martin as Charley, making the most of her amusing drunk scene with George, and good ones from William Gaminara as the taciturn and reliable Jim and Neil Roberts as the student who cannot bring out his own thoughts from behind his veneer of college coltishness.