REVIEW: BEFORE THE PARTY

SALISBURY PLAYHOUSE

Based on a 1922 Somerset Maugham short story, this 1949 Rodney Ackland stage adaptation is a scathing portrait of post-war Britain, in particular the wealthy Surrey golf club set with all its snobbery, hypocrisy and sheer vindictiveness.

This is ration-book Britain with its necessary “austerity” (where have we heard that word more recently?), complete with its illicit cravings, imperial hangovers, and social frustrations.

The seemingly respectable Skinner family – father, mother, two daughters, nanny and cook – have welcomed home from Africa their third daughter Laura, whose husband has recently died from malaria . . . or has he? And now Laura has a new boyfriend.

The stage set is deliberately fussy, overcrowded, claustrophobic and unchanging, the script slow and wordy, and the characters almost all two-dimensional caricatures.

Aubrey the father is a gruff exasperated would-be Tory politician obsessed with social climbing and “making the right impression”.

His wife Blanche is matriarchal, domineering and trivia obsessed. Their daughter Kathleen is screechy, bitter and unmarried.

Youngest daughter Susan, charmingly played by Eleanor Bennett, is seeking truths yet is threatened with child psychiatrists.

Laura’s new boyfriend David drinks copiously and is disliked by the family, until they discover that he appears in “Who’s Who” (a reference book for the wealthy, titled and vacuous) and thus they display their shallow hypocrisy in welcoming him into their dysfunctional clan.

Thought-provoking drama Before The Party runs until May 27, matinees Thursdays and Saturdays.

Brendan McCusker