Four actors and four simple chairs – that's all it takes for Peter Gill's revival of his own 1976 memory play to conjure up the impoverished austerity of postwar working-class Cardiff and a street where the walls are so thin you know just about everything that's going on next door.
With its autobiographical feel and disjointed, almost poetic, speech patterns, it evokes a time when mothers lived in floral pinafores and had tea ready on the table when their husbands got home.
Moving between the 50's and the 70's, Matt Ryan's Gerard Harte recalls a boyhood of simple pleasures and maternal discipline, and a close friendship with his neighbour Vincent Driscoll (Luke Evans) whose mother (Lindsey Coulson) is constantly pregnant and losing control of her life. There's tragedy and humour – and a delightful moment when she and Sue Johnston's resilient Mrs. Harte escape the daily drudgery with an impromptu dance together. But at the heart of it all, as Gerard returns to the place he always wanted to get away from, is his growing certainty that his relationship with Vincent should have been so much more than either boy ever allowed it to be.
Louise Kingsley
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