London Road This is London

This isn't the first time playwright Alecky Blythe has found inspiration in the lives of prostitutes. In her earlier The Girlfriend Experience, using a technique of interviewing her subjects, then asking her actors to reproduce their words accurately in performance, she allowed us to eavesdrop on their everyday existence.
This time she has adapted the procedure, joining forces with composer and lyricist Adam Cork to dramatise the consequences for the small country town of Ipswich (in Suffolk) when, in December 2006, the naked bodies of five working girls were found in quick succession.
The result is moving, funny, heart-warming, chilling – and completely original. Forced into the limelight, the locals decided to organise a "London Road in Bloom" competition, festooning the street (where, for a short time before his arrest, the serial killer lived) with hanging baskets in a colourful, regenerative attempt to rebuild their shaken community.
After the horrific events which had occurred virtually on their doorstep, and the continuing media scrum as their former neighbour (who remains an unseen presence) is arrested, charged, tried, and found guilty, it proves a lifeaffirming event, gorgeously captured by designer Katrina Lindsay.
Fluently directed by Rufus Norris (who at one point ropes the residents within the confines of criss-crossed police tape as they try to go about their daily lives) this is very much an ensemble piece. In addition to the main protagonists (including the leading lights of the Neighbourhood Watch), the eleven-strong cast brings over fifty other characters to sometimes brief, often telling, life. Verbatim theatre becomes verbatim musical as their words, complete with hesitations and repetition, are skilfully blended into songs and refrains (sung sometimes solo, sometimes in chorus) in this unique theatrical experiment which not only pays off in dramatic terms but also recognises the bleak prospects facing the remaining sex workers who, thanks to the publicity and enhanced police presence – and much to the relief of the residents – were finally cleared off their street.

Cottesloe

Bette And Joan *** TNT

Claws are discreetly sheathed when silver screen icons Bette Davis and Joan Crawford come face to face in Anton Burge’s mildly entertaining two-hander.

Behind the scenes in their mirror-image dressing rooms, though, it’s no holds barred bitching during filming of their 1962 comeback movie “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” Anita Dobson’s discreetly smirking, soignée Crawford (her animosity wrapped in modulated tones and cultivated manners) contrasts strongly with Greta Scacchi’s clumping Davis, the former working overtime to preserve her star image, the latter an actress to her fingertips who isn’t afraid to look the part, no matter how monstrous.

Burge doesn’t probe very deeply – biographical details are tantalisingly scant, the interaction between the two limited - but a fair scattering of witty one-liners and malicious observations are delivered with commendable relish.

Arts Theatre, Great Newport Street, WC2H 7JB (020 7907 7092)Tube: Leicester Square Until June 25 (£20-£34.50)

Silence **** TNT

This engrossing piece devised by Filter in association with the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Associate Director David Farr is, ironically, all about noise – the soundtracks to our everyday lives which we barely notice, the music that conjures memories – as well as love across continents and covert observation.

For 37 year old Kate (excellent Katy Stephens) noise is also a way to block out the tinnitus which has plagued her since childhood. Now married to documentary maker Michael and living in Battersea, her world shifts with the unexpected arrival of a tape which revives memories of an encounter in a Berlin club in 1991 and the intense relationship which developed between her and dissident Alexei before his enforced National Service pulled them apart.

Interweaving present day events in London (as Michael investigates secret surveillance by the Met back in the 90’s) and Russia (where Kate goes in search of Alexei) with scenes from the past, Filter conjures an atmospheric soundscape, the technology on full display on an almost bare stage.

A vertical fluorescent light is all that separates a Lewisham cafe from a Moscow restaurant (the same waitress, with a shift in demeanour, serves tables on both sides of the divide). Michael’s sound engineer (Jonjo O’Neill) records the activity of his lonely neighbour through the walls as she makes toast, but never summons the courage to talk to her.

It all combines to form a clever, complex and absorbing web of glimpsed moments, impulsive choices and unfinished business which intrigues from start to finish but offers no easy answers.

Hampstead, Eton Avenue, NW3 3EU (020 7722 9301) Tube: Swiss Cottage hampsteadtheatre.com Until May 28 (£22)

The School For Scandal *** TNT

Past and present collide in Deborah Warner’s over-lively production of Sheridan’s 1777 comic satire of gossip and scandal. Human nature hasn’t changed much in the intervening centuries – moneyed old men still marry much younger wives, rumours of clandestine assignations still run rife, and upper-class bachelors continue to roister away family fortunes.

So although the cast adopts predominantly period costume after putting on a strutting, present day fashion show, the 18th century ladies sport designer handbags and a mobile phone makes a telling appearance. Some of these anachronistic conceits work - as, for example, when the seemingly moral Joseph Surface projects pornographic stills onto the folding screen. Moments later, he uses it to conceal Katherine Parkinson’s Lady Teazle and her Vivienne Westwood carrier bags. But the styles do not always blend, with a comparatively unadorned set and Brechtian captions at odds with the (admittedly very watchable) excesses of Leo Bill’s agitated, intoxicated libertine Charles Surface who, to his credit, turns out to have a sentimental side.

In an evening of excess, it’s left to the older actors – Alan Howard’s walking-stick wielding Sir Peter Teazle (who, touchingly, eventually discovers that his decades younger spouse does indeed care for him as well as for his wealth) and John Shrapnel’s Sir Oliver Surface (going undercover to decide which of his nephews deserves to inherit) – to remind us of the more subtle aspects of Sheridan’s comedy of manners.

Barbican, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS (020 7638 8891) Tube: Barbican barbican.org.uk Until June 18 (£16.00 - £50.00)

Kingdom of Earth ****

Initially a short story inspired by a chance meeting, embellished by personal experience and first staged in 1967, Tennessee Williams’ often comic melodrama gets a rare revival to mark the centenary of his birth.

The characters are quintessential Williams – Joseph Drake’s effeminate, tubercular, cross-dressing Lot returning to his Mississippi Delta farmhouse as the flood waters are rising, tarty Myrtle (Fiona Glascott) whom, tactically, he’s just married on a TV show, and his earthy, resentful half-brother Chicken (David Sturzaker), the “dark-complected” consequence of their father’s extramarital dalliance.

It doesn’t stand comparison with the best of his work, but Lucy Bailey’s well-acted production develops into a sexually charged game of cat-and-mouse as, with Lot slumped impotently on the levee of Ruth Sutcliffe’s treacherously silted design, Chicken plays dirty to secure his inheritance.

The Print Room, 34 Hereford Road, W2 5AJ (08444 77 1000) Tube: Notting Hill Gate Until 28th May (£16.00) the-print-room.org

I Am The Wind ***

This is a marvellous production, but oh, how the play itself disappoints.

A collaborative effort between the most widely performed Norwegian playwright after Ibsen, an English translator and cast, and celebrated French director Patrice Chereau (Intimacy, La Reine Margot) and his team, even at 70 minutes long, this watery Waiting For Godot with its repetitive dialogue really dragged.

Written by Jon Fosse (who can also, apparently, lay claim to being the most widely performed living European dramatist) and translated by Simon Stephens (does the fault lie with him?), this ocean-bound musing on depression and suicidal thought starts strikingly on a bleak sandy shore, with little more than a hint of the sea.The One (the characters have no names, no background) soaked and naked to the waist, is caught up in the arms of The Other, and cradled, pieta-like, for several, extraordinary, silent minutes.

Then, in flashback, we see the two young men embark on what is presumably a symbolic as well as an actual voyage further and further out to sea, away from the safety of dry land and sheltered cove, until The One finally plunges.

The staging is hypnotic. The auditorium floods with water as their raft-like boat rises from the sea, a tilting island of temporary, precarious safety on life’s journey. And the acting is no less impressive, with Jack Laskey (his hair wild as Heathcliff, his eyes just as troubled) trying to understand the disaffected apathy of Tom Brooke’s The One.

But the sheer banality of much of the script irritates, and ultimately, once the water has retreated and this gloomy and unenlightening two-hander has come full circle, it’s Richard Peduzzi’s kinetic set which remains in the memory.

Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ Tube: Southwark/ Waterloo (0207 922 2922) youngvic.org Until May 21 (£10.00 - £27.50)

And I And Silence ****

This is such a sad, sad play, a moving account of hopes shattered by a prejudiced society which thwarts the fulfilment of even the most prosaic of dreams.

In Naomi Wallace’s short, heartfelt new drama African American Jamie (incarcerated for her part in an attempted robbery in which her brother lost his life) and Dee (who warns her to believe the rumours about the crime she committed) only aspire to earn enough money as cleaners and to find a caring man now that they’ve served their respective nine year sentences.

It’s not a lot to ask, but life on the outside for these two already damaged young women proves even harder than life in jail, where they were, at least, guaranteed food on their plates and a roof over their heads.

Caitlin McLeod’s economical production shifts smoothly back and forth between their release in 1959 and the start of their friendship in 1950 when a reluctant Jamie is won over by Dee’s seemingly irrepressible spirit.

There’s both humour and poetry in the dialogue, and all four actresses (Cat Simmons and Sally Oliver as their older selves, Cherrelle Skeete and Lauren Crace as their teenage counterparts) bring a touching honesty to their roles which makes it all the more painful to watch as resilience and optimism are worn away by poverty and abuse, and Dee’s spark, undimmed by periods in solitary confinement, is finally extinguished beyond salvation.

Finborough, Finborough Road, SW10 9ED Tube: Earl’s Court Tube (0844 847 1652) finboroughtheatre.co.uk
Until 4th June (£9 - £15)

Betty Blue Eyes **** TNT

With big blue eyes and coyly fluttering lashes, animatronic porker Betty is a definite scene-stealer in this musical adaptation of Alan Bennett’s 1984 comedy screenplay, “A Private Function.”

She’s not the only treat on the menu when the Yorkshire bigwigs’ illicit celebrations for a royal wedding in 1947 austerity Britain are sabotaged by kindly chiropodist Gilbert (Reece Shearsmith) and his socially disgruntled wife (Sarah Lancashire).

There’s a hissable zealot in the shape of Adrian Scarborough’s fanatical meat inspector and rueful acknowledgement of the aftermath of war.

And with its zappy choreography, witty lyrics set to catchy numbers, and fleshed-out performances from a cast better known as actors than singers, Richard Eyre’s deft production proves excellent entertainment, despite Betty’s protesting squeals when it’s time for her to be turned into bacon.

Novello Aldwych WC2B 4LD Tube: Charing Cross (0844 482 5170) delfontmackintosh.co.uk bettyblueeyesthemusical.com Currently booking to 22nd October (£17.50 - £59.50)

Little Eyolf **** TNT

Something has been gnawing away at Rita and Alfred Allmers’ marriage for a long time and the Rat Wife knows it.

In Ibsen’s 1894 play, it isn’t furry vermin that are causing the problems, but the old hag with her Pied Piper-like talent senses that she still has a service to offer in the home this well-off couple share with their crippled nine year old son Eyolf.

Hot on the heels of the announcement that her own marriage to director Trevor Nunn is over, Imogen Stubbs embraces the role of the desperately possessive Rita who feels her husband slipping away from her and is desperate to revive his former passion. She displays a febrile intensity which, with the advent of tragedy, is transformed into a heart-wrenching grief and, finally, a sad acceptance of what the future might hold.

Jonathan Cullen is equally affecting as Alfred, whose guilt over the circumstances of the accident which caused Eyolf’s disability has made him withdraw, first into his writing and now into new (but swiftly thwarted) plans to devote himself completely to the boy’s education.

And then there are the complicated feelings he harbours towards his half-sister Asta who is being wooed by a visiting road engineer.

Simply staged but powerfully acted, Anthony Biggs’ absorbing production draws you irresistibly into the troubled emotions of the Allmers’ unhappy world. It deserves to be another success for this tiny theatre and, with a cast of this strength, might well provide them with a transfer to a larger venue.

Jermyn Street Theatre, SW1Y 6ST Tube: Piccadilly Circus (020 7287 2875) jermynstreettheatre.co.uk Till 28th May (£18)

Irish Blood, English Heart *** TNT



Six weeks after the funeral, brothers Con and Ray meet in the rundown Southwark lockup where their late father hoarded the paraphernalia of his life. In Darren Murphy’s over-complicated, yet insufficiently penetrating, play these two second generation Irish immigrants have taken very different paths.

Con has followed in his father’s footsteps to become a London cabbie, whist Ray has made a name for himself Stateside in showbiz – and that’s part of the problem. The character he created bears a striking resemblance to Con (even down to having a red-headed spouse) and now he’s brought out a money-spinning book. With cash tight and their ambitions of opening a bistro slipping away from them, Con’s wife Betty thinks Ray owes them.


In addition to their sibling rivalry, the bothers hold completely different views of the dead man. Estranged Ray freely admits to hating him. Only reluctantly (and at Con’s insistence) has he found a tiny window between personal appearances and his flight back to the US to see the relics that remain. And despite his loyal protestations and attempts to idolise him, even Con hadn’t been near their father for a couple of years. As they reassess and relive the past, Con is forced to face up to the true nature of the man he feels duty-bound to lionise.


After what feels like a rather slow first half, the revelations come tumbling after the interval, but by then, despite a couple of strong, truthful scenes, it’s too late to care overmuch what led to Con’s current problems, whether Ray will cough up, the nature of their father’s
r elationship with the young lad who discovered the body – or, for that matter, how much of his life as an Irishman making his way in England was pure fabrication. 



Trafalgar Studios (2), Whitehall, SW1A 2DY Tube: Charing Cross (0844 871 7632) ambassadortickets.com/trafalgarstudios Till 21st May (£22.50) 


Rocket To the Moon *** TNT

In Clifford Odets’ 1938 Depression era drama, browbeaten, married New York dentist Ben (excellent Joseph Millson) is pushing 40 and doesn’t have the guts to offer his sexy new secretary Cleo more than a naïve closet love.

His wily father-in-law (a charismatic Nicholas Woodeson), captivated by her youth, can provide wealth and experience, whilst a lecherous fellow tenant sees only a would-be show girl on the make.

Unfortunately Jessica Raine’s Cleo adopts a voice so grating it’s surprising any of them stick around long enough to discover that, beneath her alluring exterior, there’s a vulnerable young woman unable to fulfil their desires, or even her own.

The Hopper influenced design emphasises the loneliness inherent in this potentially poignant play, but, despite some clever dialogue, the production burns far too slowly.

Lyttelton at the National, South Bank, SE1 9PX (020 7452 3000) Tube: Waterloo nationaltheatre.org.uk Until June 21 (£12 - £45)

Electra *** TNT

Short and intense, Carrie Cracknell’s production of Sophocles’ tragedy doesn’t stint on tears or emotion.

Holly Waddington’s design splits the audience, funnelling the actors into a long, bleak corridor of misery and suffering where, later, a frenzied Electra claws at the grave of her father Agamemnon, murdered ten years previously by Clytemnestra, his wife. She had her reasons – he sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia to the gods in exchange for a fair wind to Troy – but there’ll be no peace for Electra or for her long-lost brother Orestes until their father’s death, too, has been avenged.

Nick Payne (a Most Promising Playwright award winner in 2009) provides a powerful new version which never lets up on the misery, and Cath Whitefield gives everything as the anguished Electra, haunted by visions of her younger self and unswayed by the calm reasoning of Madeleine Potter’s Clytemnestra or the cautious warnings of her surviving sister.

Brief, blacked out scenes are punctuated by the sounds of footsteps and running water, an indelible stain is a constant reminder of spilt blood, and, immersive though it is, it’s a relief when the cycle is finally complete and, leaving this unhappy household of Ancient Greece behind, you return to the everyday bustle of Notting Hill.

Gate, Pembridge Road W11 3HQ Tube: Notting Hill Gate (020 7229 0706) gatetheatre.co.uk Until May 14 (£20)

Little Eagles *** TNT

Premiering almost exactly half a century after cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became
 the first man to orbit the earth, Rona Munro’s lengthy new play for the
 Royal Shakespeare Company takes as its focal point the chief designer who,
 though unacknowledged at the time, was the driving force behind the Soviet
 space programme.


Initially, we see Sergei Korolyov starving and beaten in one of Stalin’s
 gulags. Saved from death by a doctor’s ministrations and, subsequently, a timely summons back to Moscow, he pushes himself to the limit developing 
long range missiles in tandem with pursuing his dream - to design a rocket 
capable of propelling man into space.


Munro presents us with a wealth of interesting information (from the shifts
 in political climate to little snippets regarding the height restrictions imposed on the pilots - his “little eagles” - so that they could fit more 
comfortably within the capsule confines) and a blackly comic scene centring 
on a human guinea-pig tested beyond the limit.

As Korolyov, Darrell D’Silva
 exudes the sort of determination guaranteed to inspire devotion in his band
 of scientists who, like him, were once considered enemies of the people.
 There’s good work, too, from Dyfan Dwyfor’s likeable Gagarin (eager for a
 second voyage into space but too important a national hero to be exposed to
 such a risk) and from Brian Doherty’s coarse, jokey and enthusiastically
 supportive Khrushchev.


But some characters come and go too fast to make an impact (Korolyov’s
 second wife is reduced to just a name mentioned in passing) and there’s a
 surfeit of extraneous material. The potential for a really strong play about
 the Soviet side of the space race is lurking here, but Munro’s ambitious 
attempt, like the production’s misjudged staging of that first epic flight, 
takes off and is then left dangling.

Hampstead, Eton Avenue, NW3 3EU (020 7722 9301) Tube: Swiss Cottage hampsteadtheatre.com Until May 7 (£22-£29)



Cause Celebre *** TNT

Based on the scandalous real-life case of Alma Rattenbury and her teenage lover, Terence Rattigan’s final play (written for radio, then adapted for the stage two years later in 1977) creates a fictional member of the jury which, in 1935, tried the couple for the brutal murder of her elderly spouse.

Niamh Cusack’s dowdy Edith, shunning conjugal relations with her own husband and alienating her sexually curious son with her prudish mind-set, is the polar opposite of Anne-Marie Duff’s slinky Alma.

A prototype cougar in silk and red lipstick, Alma determinedly beds the new chauffeur, even though he’s half her age. Her refusal to denounce him in the courtroom, despite her super-smooth barrister (Nicholas Jones), proves all the more unexpected in this critique of English attitudes to class, age and sex.

Old Vic, The Cut, SE1 8NB Tube: Waterloo (0844 871 7628) oldvictheatre.com Till 11th June £10-£48.50

Bronte *** TNT

Shared Experience has been on the road for well over two decades, bringing its intense interpretations of classic plays and adaptations of major novels (including Anna Karenina, The Mill on the Floss and War and Peace) to a wide and appreciative audience.

With its hallmark combination of simple staging and emotionally charged physicality, the once distinctive style hasn’t changed much over the years.

The current venture (directed by her co-artistic director Nancy Meckler) revisits Polly Teale’s 2005 account of the Brontë sisters, lacing biographical detail and invented dialogue with integrated extracts from their work.

Although the Victorian siblings spent most of their lives isolated by the Yorkshire moors, their well-educated imaginations ran free, unfettered by conventional restraints or their circumscribed existence, to produce a clutch of famous novels, including Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

The cast performs with commitment to bring a bygone era to life, though it helps if you have at least a passing acquaintance with some of the Brontës’ works as their fictional characters materialise like persistent alter egos, revealing the suppressed side of their natures.

And Teale does a decent (if slightly repetitive job) of pointing up the differences between the young women - Emily, the most reclusive, bound to the wildness of the moors, Anne (the least famous of the three and here the least rounded) and determined, jealous Charlotte – as they cope with rejection after rejection from various publishers and with the shameful behaviour of their gifted but erratic brother Branwell whose addiction to alcohol led him to an early grave.

Interesting, but not exactly vintage Shared Experience.

Tricycle, Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR Tube: Kilburn (020 7328 1000) tricycle.co.uk Till 30th April (£12 - £22)
Then from May 10–14
Richmond Theatre, The Green, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 1QJ (0844 871 7627) ambassadortickets.com £17.50 (£14.50 concession) £30.50 (premium seats

Precious Little Talent

 **** TNT

All things seem possible for 19-year-old black American Sam in Ella 
Hickson’s compassionate (and often very funny) short new play. He believes 
he can be whoever he wants to be – unlike the disenchanted English girl
 Joey, just a few years his senior, whom he encounters high on a New York 
rooftop as Christmas approaches. They are, perhaps, typical of the attitudes
 held in their respective countries.


From a playful opening revealing the differences in the way in each of them
 views their chance meeting, Hickson delves into more unsettling territory
 as they unexpectedly meet again closer to earth.
 Sam, it transpires, is carer to Joey’s estranged father, George. He’s 
determined to keep his early onset dementia secret from his visiting 
daughter and, desperate to preserve his dignity, tries to pass off Sam as a
 rather unlikely friend.

Joey, still angry about his sudden disappearance 
from her life and her mother’s current involvement with one of his 
ex-colleagues (who happens to be Muslim) is too preoccupied with her own lack of employment to realise why the former academic is behaving so 
erratically.


Hickson has a clever way with dialogue and James Dacre’s likeable production 
is blessed with a poignant performance by Ian Gelder’s declining George (his
 English reserve worn thin by fatigue, too much whisky, and anger at his 
irreversible predicament) and an irresistible one from Anthony Welsh as
 brightly optimistic Sam.

Olivia Hallinan looks lovely but doesn’t quite 
inhabit the part of law graduate Joey to the same degree, and although it
 occasionally loses focus, this three-hander proves once again that Hickson 
is definitely a playwright to watch.

Trafalgar Studios (2), Whitehall, SW1A 2DY Tube: Charing Cross (0844 871 7632) ambassadortickets.com/trafalgarstudios Until April 30th (£19.50–£24.50)

Bed And Sofa 

*** TNT

Taking its inspiration from a 1920’s Russian silent movie seen back in 
college days, this short musical by Americans Laurence Klavan and Polly Pen
 spoofs conventional opera with a repetitive, often mundane libretto and an
 equally limited score. But that doesn’t stop this perky European premiere of
 a 1996 off-Broadway success from being surprisingly enjoyable with its 
tongue in cheek account of a ménage à trois which was never meant to be.


David Woodhead’s charmingly clever set – a tiny split abode with 4-piece
 orchestra seated above – conjures the compact apartment shared by Ludmilla 
and her construction supervisor husband Kolya during the Moscow housing
 crisis of 1926.

Their happy existence is thrown into disarray when his old 
army comrade Volodya can’t find anywhere else to live and moves in with them
 – initially sleeping on the sofa, but soon replacing Kolya in the bed. And 
that’s just the start of things.


Penelope Keith supplies an ironically plummy voiceover of Marxist quotes to
 mark each new scene (all played out with the stylised jerkiness of early 
movies) as their relationships go through various computations.

Delightfully 
sung (by Kaisa Hammarlund’s neat, smiling Ludmilla scrubbing her house 
clean, Alastair Parker’s burly Kolya and Alastair Brookshaw’s deceptively 
sensitive-faced Volodya), Luke Sheppard’s quirky production knows its 
limitations and - unlike the couple’s house guest - never outstays its 
welcome.



Finborough, Finborough Road, SW10 9ED Tube: Earl’s Court (0844 847 1652) finboroughtheatre.co.uk (£15-£18) Until 23rd of April

Smash! *** TNT



The late Jack Rosenthal (he died in 2004) scored a major hit with his 1976 TV play Bar Mitzvah Boy.

Turning it into a musical proved less fortuitous, but the experience provided the basis for this insubstantial 1981 comedy which itself never made it into the West End.

With additional material from his daughter Amy, this slight revival has, at least, an eye-catching performance from Tom Conti who plays impresario Theo with a Mittel European accent and a playful comic charm.

With a pot of his money at stake, Theo has his work cut out keeping the peace between the
 members of the creative team – novice English playwright Liz from Wimbledon, fading into the background British lyricist Mike, and the Americans with their outsize egos (posturing director Stacey with his statement scarves and The West Wing’s Richard Schiff as condescending composer Bebe with, as he keeps on reminding everybody, twenty-eight Broadway shows under his belt).

Rosenthal captures the stress of constant rewrites as (with opening night approaching) Liz litters her hotel room with pages of script changes, and fluctuating directorial decisions push them all to the limit as her original story of G.I. brides is pummelled into some sort of acceptable musical shape.

But though mildly enjoyable, this is a lightweight piece, neither as funny nor as sharp as it should be, and relying too much on the goodwill of an audience faithful to Rosenthal’s memory and susceptible to the twinkle in Conti’s eye.

Menier Chocolate Factory, 53 Southwark Street, SE1 1RUTube: London Bridge (020 7907 7060)menierchocolatefactory.com Until 8th May £29.50 & Meal Deals available £37.00

Ecstasy **** TNT

There’s nothing ecstatic about the lives of the characters in Mike Leigh’s revival of his ironically titled 1979 slice-of-life drama, set in the cheerless Kilburn bedsit of Siân Brooke’s lonely, unfulfilled petrol station attendant Jean.

It’s a dispiritingly realistic study of limited working class lives, originally devised by Leigh in conjunction with the actors who created the roles over thirty years ago and restaged here with a depressing authenticity punctuated by frequent moments of comedy provided by chirpy, light-fingered best friend Dawn (Sinéad Matthews) and her irresponsible Irish builder spouse (Allen Leech) as she totters drunkenly into his arms in a post pub singing session.

But for Jean and their old mate Len the tentative prospect of happiness seems slim in this strongly acted transfer of Hampstead’s sold out production.

Duchess, Catherine Street, WC2B 5LA Tube: Charing Cross hampsteadtheatre.com 020 7722 9301 &
nimaxtheatres.com 0844 412 4659 Until 28th May (£22-£45)