Goodness, I feel like a complete heel. The reason? I didn't entirely fall for Stephen Churchett's stage adaptation of Raymond Briggs's affectionate memoir of his parents' long and happy marriage.
Like most of Briggs's books, Ethel and Ernest is written in cartoon form, and Mark Bailey's design for the production captures the look of the book, recreating the ambience of inter-war and post-war suburban Wimbledon Park.
In many ways the evening is most interesting as a social document of changing times and attitudes: Briggs's father Ernest, a milkman, and his new wife Ethel, who had been in service, bought their three-bedroom house for £850 in the 1920s when the area was still largely working-class, and marvelled at their luck in having an inside bathroom.
The house was sold in the 1970s, after Ernest's death, for £7,000. Now these houses are home to the middle classes, and you wouldn't get much change out of half a million if you wanted one.
The book allows the reader to move at their own pace through this story of quiet people living their quiet lives. The stage adaptation moves at only one pace: very slowly. The years come and go, Hitler rises and falls, the atomic bomb is exploded over Hiroshima, young Raymond gets into grammar school, and the TV, washing machine and fridge arrive.
Ethel, a woman of genteel pretensions who aspires for her son to work in an office, never gets the tea on the balcony of Wimbledon Park that has become the symbol of all her hopes and dreams. There is a lovely moment when the news that the USSR has got the bomb and the news that Raymond intends to go to art school, not university, are treated with equal horror.
It is all very charming, very gentle and admirable in the way it sees the grace and importance of ordinary people's lives. You are never laughing at the Briggses, only with them. But although it is beautifully acted and cheerfully if slightly clunkily staged, Ethel and Ernest is not an exciting night out, and never transcends its original form.
· Until June 15. Box office: 0115-941 9419.
