When affluent shoe manufacturer Andrew Morrison returns from a business trip, he discovers that his wife Lena has stopped speaking. After 34 days of her silence and his cajoling and bullying, he decides to ask some old friends around to see if they can help crack the mystery of Lena's self-inflicted silence.
There is Anthony, Lena's oldest friend, a professor of ancient Greek who has been giving lessons to Lena, and his wife Kate who can see through the wiles and whims of her ageing husband. The other couple are psychiatrist Edward, who has long held a candle for Lena, and his poisonous wife, Lucy, a lush who clearly sees this new situation as an opportunity to ditch Ed and catch Andrew. After much shaking of heads and dispensing of liberal hospitality to themselves, the friends, who are supposed to be lending a hand, sink into philosophical chitchat as their own disastrous marriages start to unravel with terrifying speed. The wonder is that with a husband and friends like these Lena didn't stop talking years ago and take herself off to a nunnery or somewhere else nice and peaceful. Jorge Guimaraes, the author of this play, is apparently Portugal's most prolific living playwright. He may be quick, but on the evidence of this effort he is also very bad. Think of a chic Yasmin Reza play with philosophical pretensions and you have something of the tone of this evening of elegant, bickering emptiness.
With the exception of the mute Lena (played with assured dignity by Teresa Monica), all the characters are so unsympathetic and affected that more than a few minutes in their company is agony. David McGillivray as Anthony and Anthony Wise as Edward make something of their roles, but the women have nothing to work with except shallow bile and bitterness. It amounts to a couple of hours in the theatre that is indeed all for nothing.
· Until May 2. Box office: 020-7907 7060.
