Review: Bedroom Farce ****

Pure farce in every sense of the word, the story involves four couples at different stages of marriage, three bedrooms, two celebrations and one blazing row.

It's fast, well timed and has some wonderful moments of situation comedy.

The three bedrooms are presented simultaneously on stage and the action between three households flows in and out from one to the other during a more-than-hectic night.

But what sets Ayckbourn's work aside from other farces is the wonderful believability of his characters. We've all met at least someone like one of them in our own lives or maybe we recognise a reflection of ourselves.

There is the middle-aged Delia (Juliet Mills) and Ernest (Bruce Montague) celebrating their anniversary with pilchards on toast in bed after a disastrous night out; love's young dream, Malcolm (Ayden Callaghan) and Kate (Julia Mallam) getting ready for a house-warming party, and self absorbed, bedridden Nick (Maxwell Caulfield) with his injured back and stone-hearted wife Jan (Claire Wilkie), anxious to get to the party to meet her old flame.

Add to this the marital disasters of Trevor (Oliver Boot) and Susannah (Natasha Alderslade) who can't seem to live together – but who can't live part – and all emotional hell breaks loose as the two weave in and out of the bedrooms.

Bedroom Farce needs teamwork with a capital T and, oh, how this talented cast carry that off to perfection.

To August 21.