THEATRE / A Penny for a Song - Orange Tree, Richmond

Shut the gate,' exhorts Hester Bellboys when a second cannon ball rolls into her garden, threatening to ruin an idyllic picnic. John Whiting's gentle post-war satire harks back to an England where the upper classes were all lovable eccentrics, the lower orders either wily servants or straw-chomping peasants and, of course, there was always honey for tea in a beautiful English garden.

Whiting's play, as precisely constructed as a farce, exposes the lie, but not without a certain amount of good-humoured affection. Set in Dorset during the Napoleonic wars, where Sir Timothy Bellboys is preparing to defeat Napoleon and 175,000 French troops single- handed, the play lampoons the English distaste for foreigners and foreign ideas. But while Whiting's heart may be with Edward, the ex- soldier returning from the Continent fired with revolutionary ideas, he gives all the best lines to either the defenders of little England or the incurable cynics.

Sam Walters' brilliantly acted production doesn't neglect a growing sense of chill as the shadows lengthen in the garden but it is at its best when exploiting the drama's comic possibilities. A cosily entertaining evening.