The Priory

Published Friday 27 November 2009 at 16:45 by Evelyn Curlet

Kate has rented a country house for New Year’s Eve and invited a few of her closest friends for an intimate celebration of the year’s end. But country houses can be eerie, plans will go awry and friends may be less than friendly after a few drinks and an overdose of forced bonhomie.

Charlotte Riley (Laura) and Jessica Hynes (Kate) in The Priory at the Royal Court Theatre Photo: Johan Persson

Robert Innes Hopkins’ set - featuring a cold, spacious hall, mounted deer heads on the wall, fireplace and sturdy furniture - is impressive, creating an atmosphere of grandeur and isolation. Arriving straight from the capital, the characters are appropriately dwarfed by their surroundings.

Michael Wynne has a fine ear for dialogue and his script is acutely observed, resulting in a detailed dissection of the habits and horrors of London life. Swept up in ambition and acquisition, these middle-class thirty-somethings are evidently deeply unhappy at heart. Jeremy Herrin directs a stellar cast, ensuring a caustic realism pervades as this perceptive comedy becomes inexorably bleaker.

Jessica Hynes is strong and grounded in the central role of disillusioned, disappointed Kate. She has a tendency to over-project - unnecessary given the good acoustics. Rachael Stirling’s vivid, vicious Rebecca commands the stage and Charlotte Riley gives a dynamic performance as the bright, brittle Laura. Joseph Millson’s Daniel has a dry charm, while iPhone-obsessed, self-involved Ben (Alastair Mackenzie) and damp-squib Carl (Rupert Penry-Jones) - an unhappily married, resting actor who works in a garden centre - complete the unprepossessing party.

Lost, lonely and unloved, none of the characters are particularly sympathetic, but all are painfully plausible. Wynne’s comedy cuts close to the bone, but is all the more compelling for it.