GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
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.
MAYER WAKEFIELD is gripped by a production dives rapidly from champagne-quaffing slick to fraying motormouth
SIMON PARSONS is taken by a thought provoking and intelligent play performed with great sensitivity
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic



