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Love in Idleness, theatre review: Eve Best is glorious in Rattigan's perky domestic comedy

Buoyant: Anthony Head and Eve Best in Love in Idleness: Catherine Ashmore
Buoyant: Anthony Head and Eve Best in Love in Idleness: Catherine Ashmore

The main reason to see this revival of Terence Rattigan’s rarely performed Forties comedy is Eve Best. She’s glorious as Olivia Brown, a widow and aspiring socialite smitten with rich politician Sir John Fletcher yet unsettled by her loyalties to her 17-year-old son Michael.

With an array of perfectly measured gestures she conveys Olivia’s intuitive charm as well as the flimsiness of her opulent existence. She's especially good at suggesting that a life of splendour can induce feelings of guilt and rapture at precisely the same time — hers is the "Naughty but nice" school of ecstasy.

Trevor Nunn has ingeniously synthesised Rattigan’s two different versions of the play, and his production, first seen at the Menier Chocolate Factory in March, is nicely observed and buoyantly amusing, even if a little too long.

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Although intent on creating a show replete with fun, Rattigan had serious points to make about the conflict between entrenched attitudes, embodied in Fletcher’s capitalism and Michael’s socialism. But he played this down at the request of its original stars, Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt, in order to emphasise the story’s farcical qualities.

Nunn uses wartime news footage to restore the sense of political friction — William Beveridge setting out his blueprint for the welfare state gets a particularly loud cheer from the audience. And while the tone of this interpretation doesn’t always seem true to the period’s mood, the arguments certainly have a topical resonance.

Alongside Best, Edward Bluemel’s Michael may be channelling the same anxieties as Hamlet — a parallel entertainingly drawn by Fletcher — but his extravagantly petulant manner makes him look like a forerunner of Harry Enfield's Kevin the Teenager. It’s an enjoyably over-the-top performance, and there’s appealing work from Anthony Head as the smooth Fletcher and Charlotte Spencer as the politician’s estranged yet not entirely uncooperative wife.

None of this is to say that Love in Idleness is a lost masterpiece. But it’s a perky domestic comedy that plays clever games with our emotions, and Best’s vivacious Olivia is a memorable mix of frivolity and restless charisma.

Until July 1, Apollo Theatre