The Stage

Muswell Hill

Published Monday 13 February 2012 at 10:46 by Nick Smurthwaite

This cosy Richmond venue here offers up a world premiere that is anything but cosy.

Timothy Block, Dan Starkey and Katie Hayes in Muswell Hill at Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond (previous picture shows Leon Ockenden and Jasmine Hyde) Photo: Robert Day

Torben Betts, protege of Alan Ayckbourn, specialises in middle-class angst and, like his distinguished mentor, enjoys lobbing dramatic hand grenades into what might at first appear to be routine domestic comedies.

The setting is a state-of-the-art kitchen in the London suburb of Muswell Hill, where Jess and Mat, an attractive young couple, are preparing a dinner party on the day an earthquake has devastated Port-au-Prince.

While intermittently expressing absent-minded concern for the victims of the Haitian disaster, the couple go about their culinary business. Their attention is also constantly sidetracked by the need to keep up with emails, texts and Twitter. They barely have time to deal with the revelation, moments before their guests arrive, that squeaky clean Jess has been seeing another man behind Mat’s back.

You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to realise this is going to be the dinner party from hell, and then some. Karen can’t stop banging on about her dead husband, Simon bores for Britain about the evils of capitalism, while 60-year-old Tony, with his nasty grey ponytail, lusts after both Jess and her flaky alcoholic sister, Annie.

In Sam Walters’ meticulous and well-acted production, what starts out as a mildly amusing comedy of social dysfunctionality turns into something altogether darker and less comfortable. I’m not sure exactly what Betts is trying to put across but, given the earthquake dimension and the fact that all but one character seems so woefully disconnected from the real world, my guess is that it is a reflection on how technology is making us all more isolated and self-absorbed while appearing to make the world a smaller place.