Surprising flop from a top-class team: To Have and To Hold, at Hampstead Theatre, reviewed

To Have And To Hold boasts a starry cast and a top-class creative team. Richard Bean’s script is a meditation on ageing, directed by Richard Wilson and Terry Johnson, and it opens with a sight-gag about a wonky stairlift descending into a suburban lounge in Yorkshire. The stairlift is occupied by Flo, a tea-drinking fusspot (charmingly played by Marion Bailey), who looks after her crumbling husband, Jack. Both have endured 70 years of marital bliss and are slithering gently into the grave. Flo gets help from her middle-aged son Rob and his sister Tina, but they’re zestless, bland personalities.

The frivolous script abounds in repetitive jokes about locked doors, missing keys, verbal misunderstandings and a telephone extension that rings in two places at once. If a gag fails, it returns again and again with the same result: sparse laughter.