Mrs Swabb as narrator introduces everybody and fills in details we need to know.  The characterisations are good fun and when Constance orders a breast enhancement device which comes with a personal fitter Mr Shanks (Abdul Salis) who doesn’t actually know which woman is his client, the titillation is ready to begin.  The commensurate issue is that Constance doesn’t know which man her breast fitter is with consequent groping and misunderstanding. 

Into the mix from Addis Ababa, back in Blighty, is ex-pat Lady Rumpers (Caroline Langrishe) and her nubile daughter Felicity (Katie Bernstein).  

Dr Wicksteed arranges a rendezvous with pretty blonde Felicity in the hope of diverting his mid life crisis.  It seems Felicity was conceived in wartime in a blackout with a doctor whom Lady Rumpers only saw with the light of a post coital Craven A. 

What is remarkable about the direction and the acting of Bennett’s play here is that we actually start to care about these people and their hoped for outcomes.  I wanted Muriel to be able to rekindle her feelings of romance and for Constance to actually meet a man who loved flat chested girls.  There are also more rhyming couplets than I have ever heard from Alan Bennet with some fun word play. 

You can see with the humour here how popular this play is at being put on by Am Dram productions but you will never see Habeas Corpus so finely acted as it is here at the Chocolate Factory.  Patrick Marber as director obviously is affectionate about this play. We feel not only the longing but the undercurrent of sadness and unrequited love in middle age. How refreshing that they didn’t feel the need to employ an intimacy director to control the feeling!