THEATRE REVIEW: Invincible - at the Festival Theatre, Malvern, Tuesday, June 14 to Saturday, June 18, 2016.

PATRONS of Malvern Theatres enjoyed one of their most entertaining evenings for the past few months with this Original Theatre Company production of Torben Betts' play which look at the north-south divide.

The play is straight out of the wonderfully comic and sharply biting tradition of satire on modern British society so well established by Alan Ayckbourn, John Godber and Mike Leigh.

Invincible explores the class divide of northerners and southerners and its associated political liberal tensions with some incredible witty writing as the southerners, Oliver and Emily, are forced to move ‘up North’ to save on their rent following Oliver’s redundancy.

They ind themselves pitched up next to the home of Alan, postman and would-be artist, and his bored, sexy, wife Dawn, themselves struggling to pay off their mortgage and other mounting debts.

It is a fortunate coincidence that a play set during the time of an England soccer team’s demise in a European championship and a Royal Anniversary, should be performed in the same week as our Queen’s 90th birthday celebrations, while the country is also holding its collective breath to await England’s fate in this year’s tournament.

Emily decides that it is only right to invite their neighbours around for a housewarming, but her good intentions misfire in the most embarrassing and disastrous manner when she cannot but help herself from criticising Alan’s infantile portraits of his cat - Vince. Fortunately, we are spared the view of his painting of the nude, buxom Dawn.

The action of the play then revolves around the sad fate of the not-too-‘invincible’ cat, who having declared war on Emily’s guinea pigs, suffers an untimely, yet accidental, decease at the hands of Oliver’s deadly cricket throwing skills.

As in all classic farce, the comedy arises as Oliver tries to cover up his ‘crime’ by burying the mangled remains of Vince under his apple tree.

The acting by the four members of the cast is extremely impressive throughout. The company’s Artistic Director, Alastair Whatley, plays Oliver to perfection as he struggles to maintain any sort of communication with his long-term partner, Emily, played by Emily Bowker as a one-woman crusader for the ultra-left wing policies of a long-abandoned Marxist ideology.

However, the first half of the action is dominated by the gross, boozy, heartiness of the loquacious Alan, played with great relish by Graeme Brookes, matched by the cynicism and directness of his very comely wife, Dawn, played by Kerry Bennett. As much as Alan has let his beer belly grow to enormous proportions over the years of their marriage, so Dawn has kept herself in shapely trim.

I was most impressed with Oliver and Emily’s drunken re-enactment of a retro-rock night club dance as they cast their inhibitions aside for one last time. They really should audition for Strictly Come Dancing. It was that good, or that awful, depending on your own opinion of that show.

In the scenes that follow, the audience is treated to a moment of high farce, as Dawn confesses to a momentary liaison with Oliver, while he in turn cannot bring himself to confess to Alan his part in the demise of Vince, and Emily, thinking he has done just that, and totally unaware of what Dawn has just revealed, offers herself in comfort to Alan in a most suggestive manner that has the audience laughing uproariously - at the same time as squirming at the embarrassment of it all.

However, Torben Betts is confident enough in his writing to bring the mirth down to a shattering reality as first Emily relives the harrowing experience of the cot death of her eldest child, revealing all too clearly the hidden cause of the dysfunction between her and Oliver. Then, finally, Dawn suffers the dread of losing her eldest son, killed in a faraway battle with the Taliban, the horror of which surely ends any hope of redemption between her and Alan.

Her descent into despair and madness is truly moving.

If I have one criticism of the production, it lies in the entirely avoidable use of children’s building bricks permanently strewn around the front of the set. This creates a separation of the action from the audience in a play that appears best designed to be performed in an intimate ‘in-the-round’ setting.

In compensation, however, the actors deliver their lines to such good effect that every word can be clearly heard throughout the auditorium.

Watch out Ayckbourn! There’s a new kid on the block!

BGB