It’s interesting to note how quickly a play can become a period piece. That’s not to say ‘dated’, since this production of Nobel Laureate Dario Fo and co-writer Franca Rame’s one act gem seems quite contemporary in Stuart Hood’s translation. What is quite glaringly anachronistic however, is the limp chauvinism of the ‘Man’. Scott Goodair’s Man is almost apologetic in his attempt to get his wife, the Woman, to agree to an ‘open’ marriage and he tries to reason with her into agreeing. The Woman (Hannah Brooks) sees through this flimsy attempt to ease his philanderer’s conscience about getting his leg over with a series of younger paramours and she gets the best of the dialogue with some tart insights into his – not too difficult to fathom – motivation.

The production suffers a little from the decision to go for the comedy rather than the farce, hence the to’ing and fro’ing was at times a little polite where scathing sarcasm and excoriating contempt might have been more appropriate. It left me wondering how such an apparently nice couple came to such a pass. In a similar vein the constant appeal to the audience through the fourth wall could have had more indignation and blatant partisanship than the irritated, but considerate reasoning.

Perhaps predictably, but nonetheless justifiably, it was shown that the men ‘don’t like it up ‘em’ when the tables are turned given the prospect of having their noses rubbed into their wives extra marital dalliances. The Woman takes up the challenge of ‘finding a good man’ and nets herself a professor to the chagrin of the Man. (There’s a delightful irony in that the 1983 play anticipates by fourteen years Fo’s Nobel prize when she – played originally by his wife – announces her lover to be a Nobel laureate.) After much whining from the Man with threats of suicide, the Woman ‘admits’ her professor to be nothing but a fiction to arouse his jealousy, whereupon he promptly backtracks, declaring his threat to be an act of dissembling. A final phone call reveals the Woman to have been double-bluffing.

This is the first production by TICTAC, a company formed by Messrs Brooks and Goodair and I’m sure if they were to let their hair down a bit, swap the Pimms for a rough Bourbon, remember the Fos were a scourge of sexism and go for it, they’d be on track for much greater success.   ★★☆☆☆   Graham Wyles   19/06/15