Few of us understand the Macedonian problem in any great detail; fewer still would consider having it round for dinner. But David Cregan's play presents the unlikely combination of a retired professor, his waspish niece, an effete bus driver and a mordant rat-poison salesman sitting down to supper with a political hot potato.
The situation is further intensified by the potato arriving in the person of a stunningly attractive Macedonian refugee, to whom both the professor and the rat-poison man are eager to offer asylum. Credibility is further strained by the fact that the majority of the participants met only earlier that day via a tortuous string of chance encounters.
Indeed, the whole of the first half of Cregan's play feels like a belaboured piece of engineering to ensure that the second can take place. This then unfolds as a single, ensemble scene on a pleasant Surrey patio, in which the miniature scale of middle-class moaning meets the bigger picture of middle-European misery.
All this is exquisitely acted in Sam Walters's sensitive production, premiered here as part of the Stephen Joseph-Orange Tree partnership, and due to transfer to Richmond after its run in Scarborough. The problem the cast face is that this wordy play is peopled with characters who express themselves in paragraphs.
Cregan writes in a poetic, heightened register. When asked why she has sheared all the buds from her uncle's rosebush, the nasty niece barks: "It was unruly and disordered. Besides, pruning is a very good metaphor for life."
Cregan's point would seem to be the necessity of speaking one's mind. He calls a spade a spade; but then instinctively digs up an abundance of spade similes before skipping on to the next trope. Cregan's dialogue is rich in food for thought, but most of it is so overcooked as to be practically indigestible.
Until September 15. Box office: 01723 370541.
