Love on the Tracks (tour – Hemel Hempstead, Arts Centre)

This is one of the Watermill (Newbury) Theatre’s small-scale touring creations, this one in association with Big Olive Productions. The adaptation is by Richard Attlee, who – fairly enough – has also written himself some rather good parts. He is abetted by Sioned Jones and Paul Bigley who more than hold their own as they all become a variety of passengers on one of those long, slow train journeys from chilly St Petersburg to sun-drenched Yalta in pre-Revolutionary Russia.

Michael Woodward’s direction keeps up the pace throughout, from the initial largely-mimed sequence through to the final lady-gets-her-man encounter. The set is simple, just three bentwood chairs, two screen which double as compartment dividers and domestic interiors and the various suitcases, not to mention the babushka’s basket (from which you almost expect her to produce a couple of live chickens) and the previously mentioned hats, which all-but assume characters in their own right.

A woman with a tale to tell, and an appetite to match, and the hapless men she buttonholes form the link between the different stories – it’s bit like Schnitzler’s Reigen (La Ronde) without the sex. It’s extremely well acted by all three players, who manage to blend just the right amount of “don’t take this all too seriously” with split-second timing to ensure that the audience is kept wondering what on earth could possibly happen next – and to whom. It’s a gorgeously lighthearted romp.