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Benefactors by Michael Frayn: Broadstone Players, War Memorial Hall, Broadstone - May 13-17 Doors open 7.30pm Curtain up at 8pm. Tickets £6 (Tues 2 for 1) from N J Lines, The Broadway, or at door.
Written as a memory play, it looks back on two youngish married couples in 1960s London. David is a visionary architect 'on his way to a Rolls Royce and a knighthood', who hopes to do good for the working class by replacing slums with mass-housing projects of his own design. He and his self-possessed wife, Jane, are also trying to rescue the troubled marriage of their neighbours Colin, a journalist whom David first met at Cambridge, and Sheila, a love-starved former nurse.
The play's tension derives from the incendiary give-and-take of the two couples and from the roles of all four characters in an acrimonious, city-wide policy debate that threatens the realisation of David's skyscraper housing scheme.
By the time of the play's conclusion, the architect's faith in progress has been shaken and the fabric of the couples' marriages and friendship has been destroyed.
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