A Room With A View

CHRISTOPHER SMITH

First a novel, then a film and now a play, EM Forster's holiday romance emerges complete with all its social overtones in this adaptation by Roger Parsley. Also acting as director, he did a grand job though the dialogue might have had more vigour if he had pruned it even harder. Modern audiences are fly and don't need every 't' crossed.

Rhatt Davies' permanent set worked well with a minimum of scene changing.

Though the famous bathing episode was not left out, landscape generally had to be imagined.

Colourful characterisation offered vivid compensations. Oonagh Segrave-Daly was magnificently unconventional in an orange toque, while John Mangan's Mr Beebe was a feisty, observed portrayal of Anglian mannerisms. Dressed in white, Jo Sessions made a touching Lucy. A very fiasco of a fiance was played by Toby Buck. Trevor Markworth and Tony Walton showed the Emersons are made of more solid stuff.

Add a few notes of music, though oddly played on the piano, create bright sunlight for a picnic and some shades for the precious moments, and you have the poetry that puts life into this Edwardian tale of human passions.