Playwright George Bernard Shaw, Sir Sydney Cockerell (director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge) and Dame Laurentia McLachlan (abbess of Stanbrook) were the best of friends. Over 30 years they corresponded with each other on a regular basis, detailing their lives, thoughts and - in latter years- their many ailments.
Sadly, Hugh Whitemore's play, based on their letters, is the worst of theatrical experiences. Starring Roy Dotrice as Shaw, Michael Pennington as Cockerell and Patricia Routledge as McLachlan, it is warm, intelligent and always elegant, but about as exciting as a cup of cocoa spiked with half a dozen Mogadon. Its place is on the radio, not in the theatre - although I did spend one scene quite happily admiring the abundance of William Morris wallpaper and Roy Dotrice's fake beard.
"I never invent plot. It is the curse of serious drama," booms Shaw. Clearly Whitemore has taken the advice to heart. There is no plot here, just a gentle setting of the sun as one by one the correspondents stop singing and fall off their perches. By the end, Dotrice's Shaw looks like a wizened little sparrow that has become entangled in cotton wool. I'd quite happily read the letters, but having them dramatised serves no purpose at all.
Essentially, this is well-bred anecdote theatre in which three fully paid-up members of the great and the good - played by three fully paid-up members of theatre's great and good - stand around on stage and talk to themselves. Dame Laurentia McLachlan, described beautifully by Shaw as "an enclosed nun with an unenclosed mind", didn't get out much, so these three friends never actually met up. It severely reduces the dramatic possibilities of the piece. I kept hoping that something, other than an interminable discussion of the railway timetable, would happen before death intervened to claim them - and me.
What saves it from utter tedium is the sheer wit of the correspondents, particularly Shaw, who rails against the Nobel prize (which he refused) and squabbles with McLachlan over religion. I also liked Cockerell's assertion, when his finances improved, that at last "one would be able to have an egg with one's tea" - something I yearn for myself. Pennington and Dotrice do most of the work, and Routledge specialises in a beatific beam that suggests sainthood is imminently to be bestowed. One best saved for great-aunts of immense age and sweet disposition.
· Until April 1. Box office: 020-7722 9301. Then touring.
