Four Stars

It takes a while to get into the mindset of this Michael Frayn play first performed in 1984, which is set in the homes of two couples in varying time periods over 15 years.

The minimal set was effective with just a dresser and a kitchen table with four chairs.

Jane is married to architect David who has grand plans to bulldoze the dwellings in Basuto Road and build high rise flats which get higher as the play progresses. Jane helps him in his business. Sheila and Colin live over the road and always seem to be in Jane and David's house – for coffee, for tea, feeding the children, for supper and, it transpires, for support.

Nicky Gill created a feisty Jane on whom all the other characters lean. She is efficient, kind, understanding and her own woman, particularly once she comes to believe that the tower scheme is not ideal. Alan Webber's believable David was a man so enmeshed in his own ideas that he ploughed ahead regardless, surmounting difficulties from planning and, before long, dedicated opposition from Colin played by David Fanthorpe. Dogmatic, cynical and, as an ex-journalist, knowing just how to manipulate both the press and the public, Colin is cruel to his mousy wife and ends up campaigning against the high rise from a squat created by homes left empty in Basuto Road.

Sheila's story is one of triumph as Chris Morgan grew her from being too timid to say a word to a fulfilled secretary for David with her finger on the button of the project. Needless to say, her rise in confidence didn't suit her domineering husband and they separate.

Filled, as it is, with many moves between the houses, refreshments and meetings at the table, the cast had to work hard to know exactly where they were in the script and director Peter Shore had fashioned a tight production aided by a talented cast who really dug underneath their characters.

Theo Spring