Here's one to baffle future Ayckbourn scholars. Ten years ago, Ayckbourn announced a play about farewells and departures to be called Private Fears in Public Places, but abandoned the idea and wrote Communicating Doors instead.
Whatever happened to that original play remains a mystery, because this is clearly not it. The revised Private Fears - Ayckbourn's second new offering of the summer - is an enigmatic piece about failure and forgiveness, appended to a title that was clearly too good to waste.
Nicola and Dan are well-heeled, hearty types whose desperate flat-hunting belies the fact that their relationship is falling apart. Stewart, their timid estate agent, whiles away the evenings watching television while his equally lonely sister Imogen endures a disappointing round of dating agency assignments. Ambrose, a mordant bartender, is stuck at home with his ailing dad, while the home-help, Charlotte, is a scary Christian fundamentalist with a sideline in erotic dancing.
Played over a taut 90 minutes, without an interval, the action flits stealthily through a skein of hints and ambigui ties towards a revelation that never quite arrives. Dan has been drummed out of the army for an unexplained misdemeanour. Ambrose is in thrall to an abusive father, possibly because he's gay. And it's never made explicit how the Bible-wielding Charlotte holds down so many jobs at the same time.
One suspects that Charlotte holds the key to the work, though Billie-Claire Wright never quite locates the lock. There's an outstanding comic set piece in which Stephen Beckett's Dan and Sarah Moyle's Imogen pair up on a drunken blind date; but as a study of the pains of unfulfillment, the play feels strangely unfulfilling.
· Until September 4. Box office: 01723 370541.
