Theatre review: Love in Idleness

It's hard to review any show with Eve Best in it and know for sure how good the play itself is. I suspect Love in Idleness is a pretty mediocre play by Terence Rattigan's standards - which still puts it above most, admittedly - but Best's presence elevates it to a thing of pure joy. She plays Olivia, a poor widow whose son was evacuated during World War II and has been living in Canada for the last four years. The War is nearing its end and Michael (Edward Bluemel,) now nearly 18, is returning to London, meaning his mother has to find a way to tell him something she's been putting off: She's been living with a wealthy Canadian industrialist who's also serving as Churchill's cabinet minister for tanks. Sir John Fletcher (Anthony Head) is still married but has separated from his wife and is only holding off on a divorce to spare the Government a scandal; he's promised to marry Olivia once the war is over.

Theatre review: The Hotel Plays

Three Tennessee Williams vignettes come together to form an interesting promenade show from Defibrillator, a theatre company that's taken over three bedrooms and a function room of the Langham Hotel in central London to create The Hotel Plays. Small audience groups are led up and down stairs by an usher, and the stories linked by appearances from porter Charlie (Linden Walcott-Burton) as we witness intimate scenes from fracturing lives. The Langham is a pretty swanky hotel, but for Defibrillator's purposes its rooms represent places that probably aren't quite as posh, and more likely to witness the kind of nefarious business we see in the short plays. Like the long-running affair in The Pink Bedroom, directed by Anthony Banks, where a Man (Gyuri Sarossy) arrives expecting another no-strings night with his mistress. But the Woman (Helen George) is starting to want something a bit more from the relationship - something like respect.