Where: Noel Coward Theatre, London
How much: £16-£53.50
How long: 2hrs 10mins
Running until: 2nd June 2012
Merchandise:
Small programme £4
Drinks:
Wine £5
Review performance date: Monday 26th March 2012
This is a story of a dysfunctional family. Judith the retired actress, who is longing for some male company (despite her husband being sat upstairs writing his new novel) invites a man over for the weekend. Meanwhile her husband David seems to have had the same idea upstairs.
Spoilt children Simon and Sorel, longing to have some fun, both announce that they have friends arriving shortly for the weekend too! Before long the house is full with 8 people all trying to keep their distance from each other. It’s a total fase with lots of slamming doors and couples entering the room as other couple exits. The self obsessed family struggle to make it through the weekend together and in the end are so caught up in their own arguments, they don’t even notice their guests packing their bags and sneaking out of the house from under their noses.
Written in 1924, this is the first time a Noel Coward play has been performed in the Noel Coward theatre. A very pleasant show with a beautiful country house set, which moves slowly through the first act, introducing the characters and does leave you wondering where the whole show is leading to as it heads into the interval. Where it leads is still not clear at the end. All you realise is that the family are so wrapped up in their own amusements that they didn’t really need the guests in the first place and they were merely mice for the cats to play with. That is the only conclusion I could draw from it and maybe that is the point.
A nice show that didn’t drag at all or become boring. Definitely worth seeing but maybe shouldn’t be too high up on the list.
