Cheshire snobs are a breed apart, and Tim Firth has them pinned down brilliantly in this smart new comedy about the county set on safari. The closest one comes to big game in this part of the world is when Manchester United plays at home; in fact, the safari of the title refers not to chasing zebras, but to mobile dinner-parties. These are the perfect bourgeois invention, enabling one to play the ideal host and snoop on the neighbours at the same time.
Firth manipulates this mode of middle-class tail-sniffing to demonstrate how accretions of cod-custom and spurious folklore will persuade gullible antique buyers that a worthless piece of wood is a valuable heritage artefact. His play becomes a brilliant exposé of bourgeois self-deceit, brought to a pitch of squirming social embarrassment.
Firth began his writing career with a commission from Alan Ayckbourn at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, and returns after a long excursion into television with a work in which the apprentice surpasses the master.
Ayckbourn directs, however, with an intimate understanding of the three-location structure that he perfected himself in the 1970s with classics such as Bedroom Farce and Absurd Person Singular. Firth gently nudges the format into the 21st century, exposing the poverty gap in rural areas between people who move there to exploit the scenery, and those who actually work the land.
The evening is a particular triumph for John Branwell and Christine Moore as a pair of dyspeptic, middle-class monsters who are determined to believe that their pockmarked piece of furniture is a rare and genuine example of a Cheshire Buttie-Ball Table. It may be about falsehood in all aspects of life, but Firth's play is undoubtedly the genuine article.
· Until May 18. Box office: 01723 370541.
