Bon appetit

Lloyd Evans

Wednesday, 3rd June 2009

Amongst Friends
Hampstead

Taking Sides/Collaboration
Duchess

Who wrote the first ‘dinner party from hell’ drama? Shakespeare had a couple of stabs with Titus Andronicus and the banquet scene in Macbeth where Banquo’s ghost arrives to ruin a perfectly good evening. Ovid told of Procne who killed her son, Itys, and served him up in a pie to her husband Tereus. And it was Aeschylus, as I recall, who originated the genre with Prometheus Vinctus in which the main character is also the main course. The latest attempt, Amongst Friends by April De Angelis, is set in a yuppie dream-home which a tabloid hack and her ex-MP husband are keen to show off to their old chums; one’s a cancer nurse, the other an addiction counsellor with a serious addiction. What unites them is a cynical, over-competitive world view. And you might ask yourself why this quartet of smug, envious, back-biting snobs call themselves ‘friends’ at all. Well, I’ve found it’s best to have smug, envious, back-biting snobs as friends because the alternative is so much worse.

The party is just getting started when Shelley arrives, an uninvited chav from a nearby tower block, and demands a contribution of five grand for a fund she’s established to commemorate the life of her dead son. Improbable? Yes, and it gets weirder still when the boy’s unrestful spirit takes possession of his mother and mockingly addresses the assembled guests. Could Shelley be a fraud and her visions fake?

In the end it doesn’t matter. The play has a charming texture, an absolutely wonderful design and a winning spirit of playful satire that compel one to overlook its structural faults. The cast are excellent, particularly Helen Baxendale whose stony softness is just right for a Blairite newspaper hack, and Aden Gillett offers good support as a platitude-spouting New Labour smoothie. De Angelis crams the script with witty treats. When the home-delivered Congolese food arrives, Shelley tucks in with, ‘I could eat a scabby donkey.’ The play isn’t quite cut- glass perfection but it’s a serviceable addition to the range.

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