The juiciest pleasure of David Eldridge’s teacher’s triptych, first seen at the Royal Court in 2000, is its exquisite structure. The tales of three not-quite couples follow one another over three consecutive years, protagonists from each neatly reappearing in the dialogue of the next. Nick begins the circle by inviting the pantingly desperate Helen for dinner and confessing, not to undying love, but to the fact that he’s quitting their East End comp for a private school in Essex.
We next encounter two sozzled teachers from the Essex school clawing maniacally at each other’s clothes. But Michelle, it nastily transpires, has been dumped by Nick earlier in the day and is only consummating her friendship with geeky, virginal Graham to exact revenge. Anne and Robert also have an enduring, confusingly platonic love, but, under a hopeful Devon sky they begin a tentative dance of togetherness.
This last is the only act that really flies in Anna Makin’s measured, detailed production, due largely to Francesca Annis’s perfect portrait of an ageing woman, unable to believe she might grasp happiness at such a season. Elsewhere, Eldridge’s dialogue seems freighted with a wider social commentary that never fully flowers, from ideas of self sacrifice and soldiering to the impact of the profession on affairs of the heart. Makin doesn’t quite nail the comedy of the first two tales, and, apart from Chris O’Dowd’s causally disingenuous Nick, miscasting abounds. Catherine Tate is wonderfully diverting as the salacious Michelle, but so entirely vile that her attack on Graham’s pedagogic power trip carries little punch, and it’s hard to care when it duly turns on her. There’s deeply moving catharsis to be had in the redemptive final tale, but not enough to lift this thoughtful, beautifully constructed play into the realms of truly transportive art.
