Reviews

THIS production is in safe hands – the hands of master-playwright JB Priestley and of veteran director Sonia Collyer. Sonia has been involved with the New Forest Players for more than half a century and directed the same play almost 25 years ago. Her sure touch is just one of the assets that contributes to this excellent production.

WHEN we go to the theatre we expect to be asked to suspend our disbelief but there is a limit, and ‘Time to Kill’ is a badly written, badly plotted, implausible load of drivel. To justify that opinion, no more is needed than a brief resumé of the play’s premise: four housewives on an affluent estate in Maidenhead decide that the local Lothario is responsible for the death of a neighbour, so they lure him to the house of one of their number, where they handcuff him to a chair, dress up in (badly fitting) legal wigs and gowns borrowed from the local dramatic society and put him through their version of a trial. Here, ‘Desperate Housewives’ meets drawing-room drama meets ‘Witness for the Prosecution’ – perhaps a superb writer at the top of his form might make it work, but author Leslie Darbon isn’t and wasn’t and doesn’t.

ONE of these days, when the weather is a lot warmer than it is now, I shall go outside and plant a tin of baked beans, fully expecting that the next morning there will be a beanstalk growing up into the clouds. But I’ve remembered something - I’d need magic beans, and those I just don’t have. They do have them in this very jolly panto though, plus a host of other ingredients that, when mixed together, make for a smashing evening.

 HAVING spent rather longer than expected in a foreign airport departure lounge last weekend, due to a delayed flight back to Gatwick, there were certain aspects of this intriguing bitter sweet comedy with which I could most certainly identify.