The most prolific playwright in the English language (his credit list is more than twice as long as Shakespeare's), Alan Ayckbourn has been the master of British satirical farce for half a century.
The new NT Live production revives a play that premiered in 1987 when Britain was under the
shadow of Thatcherism, and introductory and interval featurettes make much of the play's "relevance" in 2014, by way of explaining why the revival plays it dead straight: greed, in short, is still good.
That's hard to argue with but it doesn't really wash: the scars left by Thatcher remain, but this is a different world - and theatre's come along a bit, too. This production is accessible and broadly humorous (though never hilarious) but it has the feel of a period piece and any political bite it may have had seems pretty toothless now.
Lindsay plays Jack McCracken who, as the play opens, has just taken over the running the family furniture business, Ayres & Graces, from his elderly father-in-law (the comic mileage wrung from the old bloke's dementia is a sign of the times).
At an opening party, he inaugurates a new era of selfless family commitment to the greater good, but within a couple of scenes he realises that everybody has had their hands in the till for years and his bold plans are mired in a moral morass.
