REVIEW: Before the Party – at the Festival Theatre, Malvern, from Monday, September 28 to Saturday, October 3, 2015.

SURPRISINGLY two of the nation’s favourite actors, Tom Conti and Gwen Taylor, had never appeared on the stage together before this tour of Rodney Ackland’s bitter-sweet comedy.

Hopefully this oversight wasn’t due to any form of the rationing that is the cornerstone of this hugely entertaining play set, as it is, shortly after the Second World War.

Ackland’s 1949 take on the original Somerset Maugham short story, written some 20 years prior, is wryly scripted with a host of bitingly funny moments delightfully delivered by Blanche Skinner (Gwen Taylor) and her height of angst husband Aubrey (Tom Conti).

Few can bumble as well as he does - particularly as a put upon father baffled and bemused by squabbles with his staff and a daughter who has confessed to murder.

Set in the Skinner's country home, with class and manners very much prevalent, it has its darker and more rugged moments and elements that, it could be argued, still remain relevant today.

The comedy mixes perfectly with the dramatic moments such as Aubrey describing the kitchen as ‘full of prostitutes and huns’ after intervening in an argument between the family’s Nazi sympathiser cook and half-Jewish Muriel who gets locked in a cupboard because she misses the now departed American soldiers.

We don’t get to see either but they have quite an impact on life in Surrey.

Just how and what will the family eat and what will the neighbouring local gentry think?

Blanche and Aubrey share the laughter equally, their professionalism and experience ensuring they don’t over-egg the situation. Their own rationing is in place here.

Splendid support too from their daughters, especially the widowed Laura (Carol Starks) and vengeful Kathleen (Elizabeth Payne), while a third, little sister Susan, so desperate to know what was going on impressed with her eagerness to show she was more grown up than everyone gave her credit for.

Immensely good fun. Now let’s rip up those ration books and ensure Tom and Gwen entertain us together again in the not too distant future.