It all sounded so promising:  a senior doctor, who had been in the forefront of the government’s response to Coronavirus, and his family in a celebration of his birthday with an unexpected disclosure in the last act.  By a writer and director who had fronted the National Theatre for a decade in the 1980s and 1990s and produced at Hampstead Theatre. 

I have long held that authors should not be allowed to direct their own plays.  Of course, there are exceptions, but on the whole, another, separate input is a creative blessing that will strengthen the resulting production.  This play was badly in need of another creative opinion. 

Hampstead had obviously spent money on the set, a huge panelled room in an academic institution with many stucco framed oil portraits of long deceased heads of college.  But therein lies the problem: the room was too big for the person to person conversations taking place and much of the first act was taken up in laying out the tables, setting up the chairs, the table covering and cloths, the plates, the glasses, the china, the nightlights and the flowers.  This was irrelevant to the action of the play.  And some of the second act was the dismantling of these dinner tables.