Table Manners, by Alan Ayckbourn, directed by Barry Park at The Old Mill Theatre

 Alan Ayckbourn's 1975 domestic comedy Table Manners may be the last significant play written in the latter part of the twentieth century in which table manners and dressing for dinner really mattered. The central scene of the play, in which the house-guests argue about who should sit where and then proceed through an extended dinner sequence which descends into squabbling and fisticuffs, is a theatrical tour-de-force which deconstructs a traditional polite dinner party, such as might occur in a Noel Coward play, in the context of the 1970s relaxation of cultural niceties. 

In Barry Park's production of Ayckbourn's play for The Old Mill Theatre this dinner scene is the fulcrum around which the action of the play revolves, and it is a bravura piece of comic theatre, hilariously unfolded by the cast. The jokes just keep coming, along with the ghastly food. It is a technically briliant scene, and a real crowd-pleaser.

Emily Howe is cast delightfully against type as Annie, a worried and sensible woman who has devoted her life to caring for her invalid mother and just wants a holiday.  Her weary devotion and loneliness is portrayed amusingly and touchingly, and her rare emotional outbursts have impact. She is being courted by the local vet, Tom, played with engagingly clumsy charm by Samuel Yeo. For all his stolid decency Tom is really pretty hopeless, so Annie has in desperation agreed to a dirty weekend in East Grinstead with Norman, the scruffy and lecherous husband of her sister Ruth. 

Norman is played with comic brio by Ian Staunton, a gangling, grinning scarecrow of a man with 'a beard that you could lose a badger in'. His success with women has nothing to do with charm and everything to do with bloody-minded persistence and the fact that he is the only male character in the play who has any real agency and presence. Louise Fishwick is Ruth, Norman's long-suffering, short-sighted, business-like wife, conveying nicely their marital distance.

Chris Hill plays Reg, Annie's brother, and Alinta Carroll is Sarah, his wife. Sarah is a brittle domestic micro-manager whose increasingly desperate attempts to keep things 'civilised' ultimately end in a scene of emotional breakdown which is moving and funny. Reg really just wants a quiet life and would rather be at home, locked in his study, building balsa-wood planes and retreating into childhood.

Alinta Carroll reminded me very much of '60s and '70s English actresses like Jill Bennett and Rachel Roberts, which is exactly right for the part. Chris Hill reminded me of Tom Courtenay. It's hard not to make comparisons with a play that has showcased so many eminent British actors over the years - Penelope Keith, Felicity Kendall, Richard Briers, Penelope Wilton, Tom Courtenay, Tom Conti...

The play was originally performed as the first instalment of a trilogy, The Norman Conquests, showing the same action from different viewpoints - the dining room, the living room, the garden. Presented on its own, as it is here, Table Manners is a little more conventional, the characters a little less rounded. The original trilogy is a theatrical marvel of interlinked and gradually revealed plotting and characterisation. The first play on its own, orphaned as it were, is still a hugely enjoyable night out; funny and expertly constructed, well-directed and lovingly acted, the full house clearly enjoying every minute of it. It is fascinatingly on the cusp between traditional drawing-room comedy and theatrical modernity, looking backwards and forwards at the same time.

(It does rather show its age in the latitude allowed to some pretty appalling male behaviour. My companion gasped audibly at one particular instance of this but explained that the strength of her reaction was driven by the fact that she was so engaged by the characters.) 

This is a relaxed and enjoyable entry into director Barry Park's recent series of thematically linked plays, which I have written about elsewhere - see my review of Hansard on this site. Table Manners is quite the palate-cleanser after the intense and emotional Breaking the Code at Melville Theatre. Table Manners lacks the complex subtexts of other plays in the series, but fits neatly into the social milieu. And it's funny.

The cast is stylishly dressed by costumier Merri Ford, as if every costume was made from a vintage 1970s Butterick sewing pattern...