A glorious production at the Richmond Theatre, writes Penny Flood

This is a glorious production of a glorious play by the master of sharp wit and devastating put down. Starring theatrical royalty Sam West as Gary Essendine, a successful actor bristling with ego and charm and heading, albeit reluctantly, into middle age, whose chickens all come home to roost just has he is about to go to Africa.

It has been argued that this play may be semi-autobiographical, but the late critic Sheridan Morley warned against that saying that: "If Present Laughter is about anything very philosophical, it is about the price of fame and the cost of charm." But to look for anything philosophical in this production is to miss the point, it's very high class farce.

West is ably supported by a stellar cast including Phyllis Logan, fresh from Downton, as his long suffering secretary, fond of him but not taken in by him for one minute. Straight laced with terrific comic timing.

All the action, and there's a lot of it, takes place in a beautiful drawing room, dominated by a spiral staircase and a huge portrait of Gary.

The cast of Present Laughter

There's so much going on with a plot that fires off in all sorts of directions cracking along at a great pace. Women emerge from and are hastily returned to the spare room; Gary's theatrical impresario friends Morris (Jason Morell) and Henry (Toby Longworth) clomp around in high dudgeon with redder and redder faces as marital indiscretions are revealed; an over enthusiastic young wannabe playwright (Patrick Walshe McBride) gets the wrong end of the stick; Lady Saltburn (Elizabeth Holland) turns up to introduce Gary her niece Daisy (Daisy Boulton) and in the middle of all this his ex-wife Liz (Rebecca Johnson) turns up. Happily she can see the funny side of it all, while servants Miss Erikson (Sally Tatum) a Swedish spiritualist, and man of the world Fred (Martin Hancock) rush around with serving breakfast, coffee and whisky, and generally offering wry observations.

And so it carries on for two hilarious hours. And just when it looks as though things couldn't get more complicated, of course they do, and the whole muddle is delightfully resolved by one more out-of-the-blue twist. Smashing stuff!

Present Laughter runs at Richmond Theatre until Saturday 6 August. Tickets are available from the box office on 0844 871 7651 .

August 5, 2016