I’m not sure we were quite in the mood for a triple-bill of British Absurdist comedies. I’m not sure we’d have been in the mood for these plays even if we had been in a more appropriate mood.
Billed as being a precursor to Pythonesque comedy, the only python-like thing in the 1960s N.F. Simpson material was talk about a neighbours snake. His plays were certainly more English whimsy than European absurdism.
The Michael Frayn was a modern piece, but lesser Frayn in my view.
Great cast; it would probably seem worthwhile watching Peter Capaldi paint the ceiling. Douglas Hodge directed this production – he seems to have a good eye and ear for this sort of stuff. It’s just not really our sort of stuff.
The critics weren’t too sure either:
I know this is light years after your comment (for which thanks!), but re-reading N.F.Simpson’s masterly ‘Resounding Tinkle’ during the coronavirus outbreak intensified the sense of horror which lies not far under the surface. There’s surely much more to it than “English whimsy” – rather, reading it today I had the continual sense of the ground about to open beneath the Paradocks’ (and everyone else’s) feet, faced with a bureaucracy speaking mad logic to a populace which can only hang on in there. All the best