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