The Stage

The Best of Friends

Published Friday 10 March 2006 at 14:10 by Jeremy Austin

So devoid of any sense of theatricality is this piece that it would hardly bear up on radio, let alone in a theatre.

Hugh Whitemore’s script is so dry it is arid, little more than three barely developed characters reciting their correspondence to one another over a period that covered most of the first half of the past century.

That one of the characters is George Bernard Shaw is little excuse for creating this piece. Dame Laurentia McLachlan, an abbess, was one of the leading church figures of her time. Academic Sir Sydney Cockerell was director of the Fitzwilliam Museum and a man who collected the company of intellectuals with the same fervour he employed in collecting his medieval manuscripts.

Despite their obvious academic talents, their letters to one another are little more than the rather bland musings of friends - with the exception of Bernard Shaw, who very occasionally makes a witticism or statement that reveals a little of his character. Roy Dotrice, Michael Pennington and Patricia Routledge recite very nicely.

There is no hint of a through line to which an audience can grasp, nor any development of the three almost cardboard cut-outs that float aimlessly across the stage.

Director James Roose-Evans’ return to the theatre he created is no more than a slight nod to its past - a past that has seen all concerned enjoy far better times.