An Hour and a Half Late

Published Wednesday 11 October 2006 at 15:40 by John Thaxter

The fledglings have flown their nest. Peter, after selling his share of the brokers’ firm to his business partner, faces early retirement and a mid-life crisis, while his wife Linda sees a futile future for them both.

“I only ever wanted what you wanted me to want,” she roundly declares. So the time has come to take stock of their marriage and a brutally candid discussion about the years ahead - except that they are just about to leave for an important dinner engagement.

Reading between the lines, I suspect the Parisian original was strongly tinged with Gallic melancholy. But Mel Smith’s robust British version, set in a swanky modern apartment overlooking Westminster Bridge, turns male despair into his own special brand of comic exasperation, while Belinda Lang as the svelte Linda exchanges female recrimination for lively point-scoring and confessions.

She also disproves her point about having nothing to occupy her time, suddenly donning a painter’s smock and bringing out her easel and oils for a bit of impromptu creativity. Or is it cynical to suggest that this is a clever device to protect her glad-rags from the messy mayhem that follows, as they exuberantly trash the living room with thrown food, drink and pot plants?

Smith’s portrayal of the podgy Peter is a brilliantly orchestrated demonstration of how to express oneself with busy hands, arms and shoulders, plus a mobile lower lip that turns even the saddest line into a quip. And he is superbly partnered by Miss Lang, whose elegance and abrasive wit are the perfect foil to male boorishness.