MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion

Manor
Lyttelton Theatre
MIX together an insolvent, forthright lady of the manor, a drugged-up former pop star, a blind anti-feminist revisionist historian, a supposedly charismatic far-right leader, a hypochondriac slob, a radical black working-class student and her would-be detective, medically trained mother and throw in a dash of aged vicar in underpants and pink fluffy jumper and you might expect a revival of the Carry On tradition.
Put all these ingredients in a physically skewed Restoration manor house on the point of being washed away in a storm of biblical proportions and throw in a dead body and a pinch of ghostly sound effects for seasoning and expectations might slide towards gothic horror or political allegory.
Moira Buffini’s play is none of these.

SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic


