Many theatrical productions require assistance from an outside specialist, be it a fight arranger, movement director or dialect coach. Arnold Wesker's 1965 drama is the only contemporary play that I know of to call for a pastry chef.
The Four Seasons finds Wesker in his most oblique form: it is not a conventional play as such, more a theatrical poem for two voices with a cookery demonstration in act two. A psychologically damaged couple come together in some remote, unspecified location, apparently to recover from the trauma of previous relationships. As the seasons roll, they bat enigmatic, metaphysical speculations back and forth until, with splendid illogic, they decide to bake an apple strudel.
I have to confess that for much of the course of the narrative, I did not have the faintest idea what was going on. But The Four Seasons looks and sounds very beautiful. Designer Mark Bailey encloses everything in a reflective black box, buffed to the high polish of the surface of a piano. Director Terry Hands, meanwhile, does gorgeous things with golden brocade, dried bluebells and falling leaves.
Even though the excellent Rachel Saunders is required to spend the first quarter of the play in a catatonic state, she accomplishes some marvellous acting with her hair, whose fiery lustre inspires her partner, Owen Teale, to brush it with a proprietorial relish that borders on creepy.
It is the preparation of the strudel, however, that comes as a coup de théatre. Wesker, a former chef, reckons that if actors have to learn how to fence and sing, they ought to be able to cook as well. Teale is one of our finest classical actors and proves himself to be no mean patissier either. It is almost alchemical, the way he teases the dough to cotton-thin transparency until it is draped over the work surface like a tablecloth.
It's the best theatrical use of paste and water since slapstick was invented. Be advised, however: this production may contain traces of nuts.
· Until November 23. Box office: 0845 330 3565.
