achievers who thought they could have it
all in their twenties and thirties suddenly
find, as the next decade looms into view,
that their careers, their partners, their
families aren't quite as fulfilling as they
expected them to be? That's the situation
facing middleclass, high-powered
charity worker Kitty in Lucinda Coxon's
immensely enjoyable, well observed and
very funny new play. She's reached a
point where the things she worked so
hard to get suddenly don't seem quite so
rewarding. But it takes the easily
laughed off and seductively genial
advances of Stanley Townsend's portly,
middle-aged fellow delegate to spark a
growing discontent with the state of her
life and her marriage.
Thea Sharrock's nimble production
would probably transfer well to television,
but there's nothing like the intimacy of
watching these all too credible characters
on stage as they wrestle with problems
which will – even if at one remove – be all
too familiar. An impossible, infuriating
mother (Anne Reid), a dangerously ill
father, alcoholism, the strain of juggling
parenthood with the demands of a
stressful job - there's something here that
will touch a nerve in most people past a
certain age.
And it's superbly acted too – with
Olivia Williams' Kitty (deputising for a
senior colleague who, ironically, is
suffering from the very disease she is
campaigning to eradicate) at its volatile
centre. There's fine support, too, from
Jonathan Cullen as her husband (whose
decision to give up his lucrative job as a
lawyer in order to teach has
unintentionally shifted the marital
dynamics), from Dominic Rowan as his
irredeemably offensive former colleague
with a greater rapport with the bottle
than with his indecisive wife, and from
Stuart McQuarrie as Kitty's best friend, a
sympathetic gay man who provides a
shoulder to cry on even when his own
heart is quietly breaking.
Louise Kingsley
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