To Have and to Hold by Richard Bean. Hampstead Theatre, Eton Avenue, London NW3 to 25th November 2023.

3***: William Russell.

The Kirks have been married for over sixty years, live in a comfortable house in Wetwang, a Yorkshire village. It has a stair lift for Jack, a retired policeman, who at 91 is less secure on his feet than his wife Florence who is ayear younger. They bicker, she keeps the front door locked, he complains about their routine, a niece comes to visit, and their regular home help known as Rhubarb Eddie because he grows the stuff. They are quite simply waiting to die and Jack, played by Alun Amstrong, has made his plans, although it takes time to find out what they are. They have an established routine worked out over the years and are perfectly happy. Their son and daughter come to see them and want to discuss their future. They are pretty well semi detached – Robert, played by Chistopher Fulford, who is sixty, works in London and America, Tina, played by Hermione Gulliford, who is 58, is an administrator in a GP practice planning to move to Australia. They have long flown the nest and really do not quite grasp their parents’ situation finding themselves up against cousin Pamela, who lives locally and does call regularly. But things are not quite right. The old couple are stuck in the house. He can no longer drive. Eddie does the shopping using Jack’s credit card and when they start looking at their parent’s bank account something is not quite right.

Bean has come up with a very loosely structured play – the action takes place over four days in May 2019 when they have come to see how their parents are getting on and then a year later after their parents have died and they are clearing the house. It may not sound funny but the problems of antiquity can be funny even when they are not and Bean manages the mixture of laughter and seriousness well helped by Armstrong and Bailey. His grouchy Jack is matched perfectly by her more confused Florence. But it is very episodic, a series sketches almost, and the house looks a little too palatial – the Hampstead stage is vast and the set, beautifully designed and filled with the things one would expect from a much used three piece suite to the service hatch between kitchen and living room and the family pictures on the staircase wall would work far better in the confines of a more traditional proscenium. It is nit picking but the gag about the fact Florence keeps the front door locked draws attention to the odd situation of the keyhole and the lack of a yale lock which a house like that would certainly have had as well as a mortice lock, if not two.

Directors Richard Wilson and Terry Johnson have ensured that it all flows smoothly enough – there is a stunning transformation to the epilogue – and Armstrong and Bailey deal with the trials and tribulations of old age, not in themselves necessarily funny, beautifully. Fulford and Gulliford as their frankly selfish children, much more sketchily written roles, provide the necessary foils. Maybe it could be tighter, have a more dramatic tale to tell – that niece is not quite as disinterested as she seems – but it provides plenty for the audience, which seemed extremely elderly on press night, to ponder. Florence, complaining Jack has been watching porn on television which leaves their children aghast, wondering how on earth he managed it – until they realise he was watching Naked Attraction shown after the watershed on Chanel Four and well within their parent’s grasp of things technological is one of them, as is the way they discover Jack’s secret after consigning it to the dump.

Cast

Alun Armstrong – Jack Kirk.

Marion Bailey – Florence Kirk.

Pamela Granger – Rachel Dale.

Christopher Fulford – Rob Kirk.

Hermione Gulliford -Tina Keenan.

Adrian Hood – Eddie.

Creatives

Director – Richard Wilson and Terry Johnson.

Designer – james Cotterill.

Lighting Designer – Bathany Gupwell.

Sound Designer – John Leonard.