Comes close to perfection: Watch on the Rhine, at the Donmar Warehouse, reviewed

Watch on the Rhine is the curiously misleading title chosen by Lillian Hellman for a wartime family drama that became a film starring Bette Davis. The location is not Europe but America and the show opens with Fanny Farrelly, a member of the New England gentry, arriving in her sumptuous drawing room for breakfast. The character of Fanny is an instant classic. A crashing snob, a bundle of nerves, a lethally bitchy matriarch, she dominates her household by cultivating favourites and crushing enemies with her venomous tongue. And yet her servants treat her with tolerance and affection. To them she seems a tricky but essentially decent oddball who needs careful handling. When they complain about her behaviour, she graciously accepts their chastisement and apologises for overstepping the mark.

This brilliant and complex portrait of a magnificently truculent American dowager feels like an essay in realism rather than a fictional effort. Patricia Hodge delivers a sublime performance. Every time she opens her mouth she unleashes yet another diabolically cutting putdown. She’s like a Shaw character but with less verbosity and more emotional clout.

The plot surrounds the homecoming of Fanny’s daughter, Sara, who has married an anti-Nazi activist, Kurt, in Germany. They smell a rat when they learn that Fanny is entertaining a Romanian émigré, Teck, who sympathises with Hitler and stands to gain a fortune by betraying Kurt. This confrontation provides a surprisingly violent ending to a play that starts as a Chekhovian comedy of manners.

It’s hard to overpraise Ellen McDougall’s superb production. The costumes and sets are exquisite. The small Donmar stage has been arranged to suggest a vast mansion with a playing area barely a few feet deep. The ensemble work is wonderful. Not a dud performance anywhere. The cast includes two juveniles with long speaking parts who perform brilliantly, and Kate Duchêne does a great turn as a crotchety but sweet-natured housekeeper.