Menier Chocolate Factory, LondonMike Leigh has often been accused of condescension towards his characters. Lindsay Posner's perceptive revival of this 1977 landmark reminds us that we are not being invited, unless we so choose, to mock the social aspirations of Leigh's Essex quintet: in reality, the play is a Strindbergian study of marital hell and of a joyless materialism that has since become the defining…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:30PM on March 9, 2012