Review: HOME AT SEVEN, Tabard Theatre

To the English, “How are you?” is not a question, it’s a greeting, to which the only acceptable answer is “Fine, And yourself?” - at least it was until recently. Never was that refusal to acknowledge one’s mental and physical health more heightened than during World War II, with its bombing raids, flattened houses and telegrams from the ministry. A stiff upper lip may have been essential to get through those terrifying nights, but what cost its maintenance as life returns, slowly, to normal?

It should be no surprise that The War looms large in this first London revival of the 1950 mystery-thriller Home at Seven, since its writer, RC Sheriff, is better known for 1928’s Journey’s End and 1955’s The Dam Busters. You suspect you’re in for an old-fashioned yarn and that’s exactly what you get.

Mr Preston returns from the City to his middle-class home in Bromley to find his wife distraught - where has he been these last 24 hours? He doesn’t even know he was missing, indeed refuses to believe it’s not just a misapprehension, but the evidence piles up and he has to accept that there’s a blank space in his mind where Monday evening amd night and Tuesday morning and afternoon should be. With a promotion due at the bank, he tells a little white lie to cover up any embarrassment, but when a robbery and murder at the local social club, of which he is Treasurer, is uncovered, the lies get bigger…

Sam Ellis lends the protagonist a melancholy air, not quite fatalistic, but, quite early on, you clock him as ill-at-ease, a man with secrets even from his loving wife (Bridget Lambert, given far too little to do). 

Around him swirl a stock set of characters who could easily have been guests at Fawlty Towers a quarter-century on. Karl Moffat’s Major (Rtd) is all bristling moustache and “Lets be ‘avin’ you” efficiency, Andrew Williams’ doctor an inquisitive coward, Jeremy Todd’s solicitor a straitlaced truth-teller. All sail dangerously close to caricature.

As does Greg Fitch as the police inspector and Maddie Crofts as a self-possessed barmaid, but the only two working class characters (at least, the only two we see) are more relaxed, more confident in themselves, more rounded. Perhaps they knew that Atlee’s government was building a country for them, rather than the others, stuck in the past. That said, this is a play in which to cross class boundaries is to follow a transgressive and dangerous path - The Angry Young Men were still a way off.

Tension builds beautifully before the interval, but after the improbabilities and conveniences in the plot become ever harder to credit (always an issue with the television series Tales of the Unexpected, into which this play would fit perfectly as a mid-run episode). As one loses a bit of faith in the story, minor irritants (the odd fluffed line and hesitancy, knock after knock at the upstage front door, breaches of professional confidentiality) loom a little larger. And the big reveal? It’s hardly a reveal at all - albeit one can understand the play’s audience, still under rationing, preferring a comforting rather than challenging resolution.

There’s always a market for this kind of tale, on stage, on television or in the book shop and fans of the genre will lap up the opportunity to see a hit play back on stage. The rest of us can enjoy looking in on a largely forgotten world that still has some contemporary relevance, but creaks just when it really should fly.       

Home at Seven at the Tabard Theatre until 20 September