One for the Road

Synopsis

On the eve of his 40th birthday Dennis is making one last attempt to break away from his middle class life - Tupperware parties, Weight Watchers and wife swapping all seem too difficult. When next-door neighbours, Roger and Jane, arrive for his party bearing gifts that embody everything that he hates about his life, Dennis is finally pushed over the edge. As he packs his rucksack and attempts to unleash his roaming, rebel spirit against the housing estate life-style that holds him down, he suddenly becomes aware, much to his horror, that others around him are just as keen to join his suburban exodus!

Our Review:

6 February 2013

Willy Russell’s comedy provides a fitting title for the swansong production by departing artistic director Laurie Sansom. And the show itself provides a fine farewell to the man who has run this building for seven years, helming a period of extraordinary critical and popular acclaim and reinforcing Northampton’s place on the theatrical map.

The play itself is regular Russell fare, with the broad, effective comedy rooted in class and social aspirations, and Sansom’s production makes good use of the 1980s setting, with excellent period detail from designer Jessica Curtis on a fascinating minimalist set of invisible walls and housing estate conformity.

The cast of four are consistently superb, with the slow disintegration of the two couples’ relationship carefully and precisely drawn, with moments of pathos and pain along the way.

[Con O’Neill], at the heart of the piece, reveals an impressive control of his character Dennis, descending through drink and a midlife crisis in...

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