With just three actors, two time-schemes and a wealth of comic invention, Lesley Bruce has crafted a tidily well-made play about a slovenly unmade bed.
Single thirty-something Joni returns from holiday to find the floor space in her flat consumed by a hideous, baronial-style four-poster. Worse still, there is a man in it who appears to be wearing some of her clothes.
The squatter turns out to be Graham, the abandoned boyfriend of the girl Joni had commissioned to look after the flat, and the bed is the sole bequest of her recently deceased mother. Faced with an unwanted bed and a spare boyfriend, Joni does what any right-thinking 33-year-old single professional would do and starts fretting about whether to have a baby.
For most of the first half, Bruce's play seems set to develop into yet another domestic comedy about singles and family planning, which is the last thing the British theatre needs. But then something wholly unexpected happens when Drew, a charismatic Australian zoologist, literally swings by on the ropes he used to hoist the bed through the window, and rearranges all of Joni's fragile emotional certainties.
For the second half, Bruce winds the clock back 30 years, so that Joni has turned into her mother, Fran, and the two men into a pair of blokes who launch into a bizarre competition for her affections. Philip is a cycle-clipped nerd who can name all the books of the Bible in order; Robin is a raffish woodcarver with a ruthless streak, who crowns his triumph by pledging to build Fran a spectacular bed.
Laurie Sansom's bed-bound staging is very funny and the play is well acted. Sarah Moyle is sweet and slightly flaky as Joni and Fran, with Will Barton and Pascal Langdale adding great value as the unsuitable suitors. But full marks must go to the Stephen Joseph Theatre props department for building a berth barely inches smaller than the acting area itself. Certain plays take a while to stretch out and demonstrate their true worth: this one could be a sleeper.
· In rep until July 12. Box office: 01723 370541.
