Sugar Daddies

Published Friday 18 January 2008 at 12:00 by Sheila Tracy

Robin Herford has acted in and directed Alan Ayckbourn plays for 30 years, including the comparatively recent Sugar Daddies. The actor’s once favourite prop, the cigarette, is now replaced with the mobile phone, much in evidence in the London flat occupied by Chloe and Sasha, her newly arrived sister from Norfolk.

Rebecca Everett as Chloe and Natalie Burt as Sasha give widely contrasting performances, with Everett screaming into her mobile and also at her sister when she brings Val, a Father Christmas injured in a roadside accident, back to the flat to recover. Burt is charmingly convincing as the naïve Sasha, a student with appropriate Norfolk accent, but needs to project her voice more to be heard clearly.

A friendship develops between the elderly Val, played by Brian Miller, and the young Sasha, and soon he is showering her with gifts, taking her to the opera and suggesting she redecorate the flat while her sister is on holiday. This Sugar Daddy obviously has a lot of money but wants nothing in return.

Enter Michael Burrell as Ashley, the occupant of the flat below, and it is soon obvious the two men have known each other in the past, both admitting to be former policemen, but are they? Alwyne Taylor bursts upon the scene in the second act as the brassy interior decorator Charmaine, one of Val’s seemingly innumerable female business friends, bringing a welcome sparkle to a play where not a great deal happens.