Reviews

This Happy Breed (Bath)

Editorial Staff
London's West End

Frank Gibbons, living right by the Clapham omnibus, is Noel Coward’s idealised English working-man, ever grateful to his employer in this cavalcade of the lower classes. He’s similar to his new neighbour and wartime friend Bob Mitchell – and Bob’s son Billy, a bastion of the navy in which he serves.

As the years roll between the two World Wars, the Gibbons bicker, splinter and die, but Coward’s spokesman Frank remains a stalwart through all nine scenes, finally passing on his sense of English qualities to a baby grandson.

Coward’s wit is sure as ever; he has an acute sense of how wedding preparations can provoke tempers. But his definition of happiness for this breed is the opposite of the artistic temperaments in his best-known comedies. Being ordinary, decent and right-minded is what matters.

It’s unlikely a production will better Stephen Unwin’s for this year’s Peter Hall season. As Simon Higlett’s décor modernises over the years with new wallpaper, lighting and a wireless, the dozen performances steadily mature.

Outstandingly, Dean Lennox Kelly’s Frank contrasts his variously jolly or anguished wife Ethel Rebecca Johnson, in a play where men think thoughts and women go all emotional about their family world.

Marjorie Yates is quietly vituperative as Frank’s truculent mother-in-law sniping at Jayne McKenna’s poor relation Sylvia, who develops from whining defensiveness to smugness as a Christian Scientist.

It is hard to imagine the play done better. Whether it’s worth doing at all is another matter.

– Timothy Ramsden