Image by Prudence Upton
Before he was the centre of British Cult TV for much of the mid 2010s, running both "Doctor Who" and "Sherlock" from 2010-2017, Steven Moffat wrote the sitcom "Coupling" in the late 90s and early 2000s, which included a number of episodes that approached classic theatrical farce in their speed, wit and ability to juggle multiple situations. Two decades later he premiered an actual theatrical farce at Chichester, subsequently running two west-end seasons of a comedy-of-extreme-manners as a couple on a cruise find themselves inadvertently inviting a serial killer to stay in their house and finding themselves unable to find a way to ask them to leave again. If you want to go for a deeper meaning, you could decide this is a play about the relationship between the UK and the US in the post-Trump era as Britain tries desperately to disentangle itself from the special relationship with the Americans - but really this is just an excuse for Moffat to play with a different form, creating a killer part for a leading lady and a range of interesting supporting roles from trying-to-be-effectual-husband to boring-neighour to bemused-policeman.
Helen Thomson gets the leading lady role and delivers with aplomb - loud, cocky, a force of nature who reshapes the world around her and makes it impossible to argue with her. She's a compelling centre and draws all the attention when she's onstage, justifiably. Tim Walter as the hapless husband gets a major Mofffat Rant in act two and otherwise is mostly looking bemused or being steamrollered, and he scores laughs as both, as does Alex Lee as his not-very-much-bolder wife. Huw Higginson as the un-nervingly dull neighbour makes the role just the right side of disconcerting rather than boring.
This is not necessarily the best thing Moffat's ever written - some of the writing gets a little flabby and he does stretch a few jokes a little too long rather than moving on briskly - and Simon Phillips directs a lavish production that occasionally lapses into some of that flabbiness - it does hit the hysterical heights occasionally but there's a little too much air in there that means this doesn't quite build to farcical greatness as it might. Isabel Hudson's design is suitably grand for the Ros but feels a little incongrous to the suburban home it's supposed to be - it's a little too grand-manor.
This is a play that should be a delight but instead is more an occasional giggle rather than a hysterical night out - I'm not sure whether it's entirely the production or also inherent to the script (and it could also be that the Ros Packer is an awfully big venue for a light comedy), but this doesn't quite fly as it might.
