Just Between Ourselves

Screwed Up

Just Between Ourselves

by Alan Ayckbourn

London Classic Theatre at the Theatre Royal, Windsor until 5^th April, then on tour until 12^th July

Review by Gill Martin

Dennis’s Mini car has had a breakdown, his wife Vera is about to. He is totally unaware of his wife’s state of mind. Dennis fettles and fiddles, Vera fluffs and frets, and his live-in mother Marjorie fusses and finds fault.

Dennis’s neighbour Neil is equally blithely indifferent to his wife’s feelings. Could he buy the Mini as a surprise pressie? But Pam, his wife has enough problems without a clapped-our car. While Neil haggles, Pam niggles. But birthday “celebrations” are imminent.

Michael Cabot’s production of Ayckbourn’s social satire from 1976 does not make for a jolly night out. Multi award-winning playwright Alan Ayckbourn (now 85 years old) has written over eighty full length dramas, mainly comedies, and his plays are a familiar feature in the West End. However, the undercurrents of tension and unhappiness of the long-suffering women he portrays in Just Between Ourselves makes it arguably his bleakest offering, written, as it was, during a bitter Scarborough winter.

The timeline follows two married couples celebrating, if that is the word, their individual birthdays. These are not joyful occasions, but times for recriminations and frustrations.

Designer, Elizabeth Wright’s set is simple, Dennis’s garage with yet to be repaired broken doors. Broken doors, broken relationships.

Ayckbourn shines a laser focus on domestic disharmony, showing how we destroy those we supposedly love. Dennis is a cheery blunderer who spends his time in his garage tinkering with DIY projects. But Dennis’s incapacity to make the ageing Mini car function, or even to get the garage doors to open, is matched by his utter failure to see that his wife, Vera, is suffering.

Vera is sensitively played by Holly Smith, her fragility underlined by her constant clumsiness— dropping the kettle and smashing the crockery — as she heads for a nervous breakdown. Dennis is completely oblivious as he demolishes Vera’s confidence by belittling her. He understands the workings of the emerald green Mini better than what makes his wife tick. And her crotchety mother-in-law Marjorie (Connie Walker) adds to her marital woes in this suburban tragedy of neglect.

Inept DIY wannabe Dennis neglects to fix the garage doors. He neglects his wife’s needs. If only he could live up to his handyman father who created wonderful birthday presents each year, including a carousel with moving horses. If only … …

His mantra is: ‘If I can’t find a nail I’ll use a screw. If I can’t find a screw I won’t bother.’ The same applies to his attitude to Vera’s slide towards catatonic depression.

Hypochondriac neighbour Neil (Joseph Clowser) matches Dennis (Tom Richardson) in the marital department, admitting that whereas women need a rock he is more of a marshmallow. He puts down the downward trajectory of his relationship with the sexually and professionally frustrated Pam (Helen Phillips) to “people get demagnetised after a bit.”

There has been criticism of the set, built around Vera’s old mini in Dennis’s garage, which can make it difficult for some front row stalls audience members of the audience to properly see the stage. A hefty, high L-shaped workbench dominates the front of the set.

You have to feel for Dennis, ever cheerful and jokey. But you still want to slap him. He’s sad, not bad, as he shuts himself off from emotions in his man-cave garage. It’s his refuge from the messy stuff of living and relationships. He is oblivious of his wife’s pain. He reckons she’s “always happiest at home.” How painfully, wildly wide of the mark.

Dennis, Vera, Neil and Pam are aiming for fulfilment. But life isn’t like that, as Ayckbourn shows us, stripping off the facade to expose inner turmoil.

Just Between Ourselves is one of Ayckbourn’s starkest plays, poignant in its meticulously observation of human frailty, just occasionally crackling with humour.

Windsor has a loyal audience of locals, many of a certain age who certainly lived through the Seventies. But unless you love Ayckbourn this play feels jaded, past its prime, as if waiting for life support to be pulled.

Gill Martin, April 2025

Photography by Will Green