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London,
Liz Hoggard's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Anna Mackmin.
Cast: Catherine Tate, Francesca Annis, Lisa Dillon, Chris O'Dowd, Dominic Rowan, Nigel Lindsay
Description: A darkly comic play about love and friendship, starring Catherine Tate, Francesca Annis and Chris O'Dowd. Written by David Eldridge.
Trains: Tube: Leicester Square/Charing Cross 
Phone: 0870060 6623
Website: www.theambassadors.com/dukeofyorks
Love's hesitant dance: Francesca Annis (Anne) and Nigel Lindsay (Robert)
It's fashionable to give the middle classes a good kicking at the moment. The Royal Court's artistic director, Dominic Cooke, began his regime declaring that this was his very intention, the brilliant, excoriating The Pain and the Itch being a deliberate attempt to provoke his bourgeois audience.
So I admit I approached David Eldridge's Under the Blue Sky - which follows the interconnected love lives of three sets of teachers - with trepidation. As a teacher's daughter, I feared the play would find it all too easy to knock a whitecollar profession that tries to make a difference. What sport to make fun of their love lives.
But Eldridge, who spent many years hanging out with teacher friends, listening to their stories, absolutely nails a certain social milieu with wit and generosity. From Catherine Tate's brilliant, tarty Michelle to Lisa Dillon's clingy moralist, who almost tips over into physical violence, they are all too recognisable. Your heart goes out to them.
The play was originally produced for the gritty theatre upstairs at the Royal Court in 2000 and admittedlyits political references have dated. You could legitimately accuse this West End revival of being little more than a mainstream comedy of manners. But it's out of just this sort of domestic minutiae that real emotional truth comes.
The night I went, I counted numerous women and men in the audience, gay and straight, heads in hands, groaning in embarrassed recollection at the stupid things we do for love. Everyone knows what it's like to be in a long-term nonaffair - so pity the poor teachers who are literally trapped together in the staff room. There really is no escape.
And it's all too easy to forget that frontline workers - teachers, social workers, healthcare professionals - deserve a voice too. Like Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, Under a Blue Sky celebrates the value of their work. The final scene, where two middle-aged teachers (played by Francesca Annis and Nigel Lindsay) finally - falteringly - reveal their love is a masterpiece of emotional tension. They even get to do a great embarrassing dance.
So ignore the snobs, inverted or otherwise. This really is a fantastically entertaining night in the theatre.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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As a teacher myself, I did wonder whether what I would see would have any real relevance to the people and situations I knew. It did. David Eldridge has really captured some of the concerns and pitfalls of being a teacher. The beautifully linked and yet contrasting scenes each had something I recognised in them.
Although the final image didn't really work for me, despite numerous front-line references throughout, it was thought-provoking and it made me wonder what the non-teaching members of the audience perceived about the role and value of teachers today.
And it's funny. Laughter really did erupt when the social absurdities that Eldridge and the cast convey so well sneak up on you. The range of humour in it means different sections of the audience laughed at different aspects, but I heard no complaints and I would highly recommend the show.
- Halla Williams, Bristol, England
