If So, Then Yes
A surprise revival of two earlier N F Simpson plays at the Donmar Warehouse three years ago reminded us of what we’d been missing for so long: this blissfully funny, now 91 year-old, playwright is still best known for A Resounding Tinkle and One Way Pendulum, both directed by William Gaskill at the Royal Court over fifty years ago.
The world and his wife pay a call, interrupting his dictation, invading the open day and suggesting that Jean-Paul Sartre won the Nobel Prize because of his perfect teeth. And if it’s the divine presence you’re looking for, you’d have to go a long way to beat Clacton, according to one of the cleaners.
It’s wonderful to see the silvery-voiced Roddy Maude-Roxby again as the inquisitive, autobiographical Geoffrey Wythenshaw, but the performance stutters anxiously along without any sense of continuity, and this affects the various contributions of a good cast including Paul Copley, Di Botcher, Sarah Crowden and Steven Beard, quick-changing like mad as relatives, care workers, tourists, businessmen and fellow geriatrics.
