The Stage

Many Roads to Paradise

Published Monday 16 June 2008 at 10:20 by Natasha Tripney

Stewart Permutt’s bittersweet play features three interconnected relationships. Martin, a middle aged Jewish travel agent meets a man 20 years his junior on a gay dating website. His colleague Helen has been living with the strident, domineering Avril for 30 years, but their relationship is under strain after Avril’s redundancy. Helen’s mum, Stella, meanwhile, who lives in an old people’s home, with her health failing and her sight gone, has developed a friendship with her new nurse, a Muslim woman from Somalia, and their growing closeness is starting to make Helen jealous.

If there is a theme to Permutt’s play, it’s about the human spectrum and how all people have their prejudices and their dreams. Helen is apprehensive about a Muslim woman looking after her mother, while Sadia, the nurse, cannot fathom why Helen would choose to spend her life with a woman. Anthony Biggs’ production is admirably subtle in its handling of these themes, subtler certainly than the play itself, producing moments of superb social awkwardness, a dinner party thrown by Helen chief among them.

There are some strong performances amongst cast, particularly from Gillian Hanna as the downtrodden, frumpy Helen and Miriam Karlin as the stubborn, frustrated Stella who has no intention of going gentle into that good night.