NEXT TIME I’LL SING TO YOU Orange Tree, Richmond

It is somewhat disconcerting to find that James Saunders’ critically-admired Absurdist play, which I had once enjoyed so much that I saw it twice, should now seem to be so tiresome and not worth reviving. Saunders, drawing freely on Luigi Pirandello and Samuel Beckett, offers a debate on the very nature of existence. He takes, as a starting point, for his pseudo-philosophical discussion, Raleigh Trevelyan’s novel about Jimmy Mason, the Hermit of Great Canfield, Essex, who died at the age of 84, having cut himself off from the world for the previous forty years. The language is occasionally poetic and the music hall banter has its funny moments; but bandying existentialism just isn’t enough.