Seriously over-valued at its Royal Court Upstairs premiere in 2000, this David Eldridge triptych about the psycho-sexual hang-ups and problematic tie-ups of three schoolteacher couples is oddly chosen for West End revival.
Under the Blue Sky's trio of two character, half-hour plays, linked by direct or indirect sexual associations, seeks to show how emotionally retarded and repressed schoolteachers can be when involved with each other.
The same charge might similarly be levelled against any professional, roughly middle-class grouping - journalists or even playwrights for example.
About teachers' professional problems, which might cast light on their private tensions, Eldridge offers no insights. Chris O'Dowd's handsome Nick drives two female colleagues wild with desire, but the reasons for his move from state to independent school, inspires scant debate. Instead, a laboured, psychologically unconvincing comedy of sexual manners is arranged, preceded gratuituously by the big bang of the Canary wharf IRA explosion in 1996.
In Nick's smart kitchen, Eldridge stirs an unlikely plot. Lisa Dillon's attractive Helen is so masochistically smitten by this exploitative man that, although he has slept with her just once in three years, she still tries to occupy his life and bed.
A pathetic situation is effortfully milked for laughs, though not as much as in the farcial excesses of the second play, where Catherine Tate's splendid, razor-tongued, sexual opportunist, Michelle tries vainly to get more than a rise out of Dominic Rowan's unpopular teacher, Graham - a virginal, prematurely ejaculating, voyeuristic stalker.
Such adolescent schoolboy comedy yields to an equally preposterous scenario. A ravishingly attractive Francesca Annis, exuding mellow ruefulness as senior teacher Anne, elegantly wards off the determined advances of Nigel Lindsay's plumpish teacher Robert, 20 years her junior, who has been sharing holiday bedrooms but no sex with her for years. A First World War revelation of her aunt's unfulfilled love affair schematically precipitates Anne's shy confession that she has always longed to slip into Robert's arms and life. Miss Annis's charismatic performance in Anna Mackmin's atmospheric production imparts to this unbelievably delayed union a lovely pathos.
Closes 20 September. Information: 0870 060 6623.
Under The Blue Sky
The Duke Of York's
St Martin's Lane, WC2N 4BG
