Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Toffs rule! 

At last — an exuberant satire that challenges the values of the Islington patisserie queue

issue 02 November 2013

This is a strange one. Simon Paisley Day’s new play feels like a conventional comedy of manners. Three couples pitch up at a Welsh cottage for a relaxing weekend away from the kiddies. Trouble erupts instantly. Keith and Briony bicker over the milk that the swollen-breasted Briony has to express into plastic bottles. Keith secretly craves his wife’s ‘liquid love’ and he tiptoes around the cottage trying to glug it back without being spotted by the others.

Ross and Rosy arrive. They’re an achingly smug yuppie twosome. They finish each other’s sentences. They tee up each other’s anecdotes. They stand in the kitchen entwined in each other’s arms and gaze out at their friends like kittens on a Christmas card. They are, of course, keeping a stack of marital problems hidden from view.

Upper-class Charles and Serena got invited by accident.

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