Description

An ingenious set greets the audience of this award winning play: the cross section of a Victorian house that has been divided into three flats.

The owner, a fastidious, elegant executive named Barbara, contentedly occupies the ordered, male free ground floor visible in its entirety. The basement ceiling can be seen and this is where, Gilbert, a boorish postman and handyman, is painting a nude study of his landlady.

Barbara is letting Nikki, a school-friend, and her fiance use the upstairs flat even though she has taken an instant dislike to him. Ever life’s victim, Nikki is destined to suffer yet again when Barbara succumbs to an unexpected and violent passion.

Handles a potentially tragic theme with a rueful comic zest… This is a Private Lives for the nineties.” – London Guardian

“It comes at you with a sense of new minted inspiration, and of wit and comedy, which is both bruising and healing. As with all of [Ayckbourn’s] best work, the structure of the play and the structure of the set are expressions of the play’s subject.” – London Sunday Times“