Churchill Theatre, Bromley

It’s the lie secret lovers tell each other..it’s OK to cheat just as
long as no-one gets hurt.

And its a poignant backdrop to one of Alan Ayckbourn’s best plays
tackling love, lust, isolation, deceit and addiction head-on.

Set in the mid-1990’s in the halcyon era before Twitter and Facebook,
it is set on three levels of a house in trendy Fulham converted into
flats.

Scottish vegetarian Hamish and his lover Nickki are about to move into
their own home and Nikki persuades her old school pal Barbara to let
them stay in one of the flats.

It is the eternal triangle...with a sinister twist.

Hamish shouldn’t be a sympathetic character – he is capricious,
devious and duplicitous..only Ackbourn gives him some of the best
lines and Edward Bennett delivers them perfectly..never missing a
caustic beat.

And his love nemesis Barbara – a starch-knickered, jolly hockey sticks
snob – is rife to be sent up... only Claire Price produces a flawed,
lonely and fragile woman inducing genuine empathy.

As the plot drifts through autumnal days it is hard to believe these
two will end up as illicit lovers – but then Barbara has a shower and
emerges as a fabulous hair-down desirable vamp.

Between them is Australian soap star-singer Natalie Imbruglia as the
hapless Nikki, caught in the middle of this internecine love battle.
Her grief at discovering the double betrayal is all too real – and her
revenge all too funny.

She is torn by her warmly remembered schoolgirl crush of head prefect
Barbara and her head-in-the cloud dreamy romance after stealing Hamish
away from his wife.

This isn’t a car crash relationship...it’s a full on demolition derby
with no-one escaping either emotional or physical pain.

I winced at the crass love making of Hamish and Barbara while Nikki
sings a dirty version of their old school song in the bath, shook my
head at the absurdity of the two schemers comparing Filofaxs to
arrange a time to divulge their skulduggery to the clueless Nikki and
then guiltily laughed at the domestic violence.

Add to this the fourth dimension, a Northern (well he would have to
be..who else would do odd jobs for love?) postman-cum-plumber who
rents the flat downstairs and is hopelessly devoted to Barbara...even
painting her in the nude on his ceiling and secretly wearing her
charity shop hand-out dresses and wig.

Simon Gregor almost steals the show with, for me, is probably the best
drunk scene since Dudley Moore’s Arthur..wrecking a carefully planned
soiree for the four of them.

Laurence Boswell directs with the precise touch of skilled surgeon,
each cut deep and to the point...but then managing to heal each wound
by leaving the audience in stitches.

However, in the end no-one escapes pain in this anti-love romance
first performed in Scarborough 17 years ago. It's a play which has
lost none of its multi-layered poignancy.

In the early 1990’s REM’s released Everybody Hurts...which would have
been the perfect song to end the play...only Michael Stipe never made
me laugh this much!

Things We Do For Love is at Bromley's Churchill Theatre until Saturday, June 14. Visit http://www.atgtickets.com/venues/the-churchill-theatre-bromley/ or call 0844 8717615.