Country Magic *** TNT

Friday 24 April 2009

Though more than a touch melodramatic - and considerably overwritten for modern tastes - this romantic fable from the hand of Edwardian playwright Arthur Wing Pinero has a heart-warming core which offers hope and comfort for damaged souls in search of happiness as it warns about the cruelty of judging by appearance.

Premiered as The Enchanted Cottage in 1921, it hit a chord with a post- war audience, was filmed a couple of years later and again in 1945. Director Phil Willmott’s adaptation, aided by Robin Don’s deceptively simple, partly translucent design, wisely remains true to the original period.

It brings together an emotionally and physically crippled upper-class ex soldier, Bashforth, and an exceptionally plain country girl who shows him kindness. Isolated (by choice) in a remote cottage, with just a mysterious widowed housekeeper for company, Bashforth can’t come to terms with all that his First World War wounds have deprived him of - his looks, his stability, his carefree social past. But when a marriage of convenience turns into true love, is it witchcraft, delusion or something else which makes the ugly beautiful?

There’s little subtlety in this play – Bashforth’s interfering relatives and the awkward rector with his heavily pregnant wife are broadly drawn, rather unsympathetic, comic characters, and much is made of the disfiguring growth on his sister’s nose. But Jamie Hinde brings dignity to the role of fellow ex-serviceman, Hillgrove, blinded in battle yet able to see more clearly than the others of his class, and, with its touching message, it’s hard to dislike this sentimental and somewhat dated piece of whimsy.

Finborough, Finborough Road, SW10 9ED. Earl’s Court Tube (0844 847 1652) www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk till 9th May (£9 - £13)