Theatre Review: The Late Middle Classes

Palace Theatre, Watford (01923 225671)

Simon Gray's deeply satisfying, funny-sad and perceptive new play is set in the 1950s world of tennis and gin and more gin, and dealing with one's inferiors, being a boon to one's husband, and trying to forget the less constricted world the war had opened up to women. Harold Pinter's pitch-perfect production, beautifully acted by the likes of Harriet Walter and Nicholas Wodeson, emphasises not only the Rattiganesque stage-craft but a Dickensian range of sympathies.