There’s no doubt that Circa puts on a great Roger Hall and this iter­a­tion of Four flat whites in Italy is no excep­tion. It crackles with energy and fair zips through the action. Here’s the story – Adri­an (Stu­art Devenie) and Alis­on (Dari­en Takle) – art gal­lery attend­ing, book read­ing, Labour voters – are about to take the trip of a life­time to Italy with their friends. Unfor­tu­nately the male bestie injures him­self, so they end up going with Harry (Tim Gor­don) and Judy (Vivi­en Bell) – wine drink­ing, well-off, Nation­al voters. Cue mis­un­der­stand­ings, adjust­ments, gentle and not so gentle teas­ing, and a pretty fair descrip­tion of what that hol­i­day would be like. The cast is roun­ded out by Heath­er O’Car­roll and Simon Vin­cent who play every oth­er char­ac­ter. (Spe­cial men­tion to O’Car­roll’s East­ern European maid, and Vin­cent’s Gla­di­at­or, plus their amor­ous car rent­al couple. Hil­ari­ous. Oh, and their villa-own­ing couple. Sweet.) There’s noth­ing too chal­len­ging in the script so it’s an easy watch with plenty of laughs. (More laughs if you are the demo­graph­ic that this play is aimed at, but still some to be had if you’re not.)

The coolest thing about this play is that it will be offered as an audio described per­form­ance on 5 Octo­ber at 2pm. “Audio descrip­tion is a tech­nique that allows blind and visu­ally impaired audi­ence mem­bers to enjoy a live theatre per­form­ance. Those who require it will be giv­en a head­set, through which a nar­rat­or will talk dur­ing the present­a­tion, describ­ing what is hap­pen­ing on the stage dur­ing the nat­ur­al pauses in the dia­logue. A touch tour will be offered before the per­form­ance, to give blind and visu­ally impaired audi­ence mem­bers the chance to “see” the set and cos­tumes.” Fant­ast­ic work Circa.

  • Four flat whites in Italy on at Circa to 7 Octo­ber