Hall makes Shaw shine

You never can Tell/Waiting for Godot
Theatre Royal, Bath

It's always a pleasure to see an old pro exercising his skill. In George Bernard Shaw's comedy of familial and marital discord You Never Can Tell, Edward Fox tackles the cameo role of Walter the wise waiter as if it were a favourite anecdote, in which he knows every peak and punchline. His stately performance does much to anchor the race of ideas in Peter Hall's brittle, amusing but rather mechanical production.

Diana Quick is Mrs Clandon, the free-thinking mother who has raised her three children alone, Ken Bones her chilly estranged husband who happens upon them and tries to take them back. Here, and in the subplot where the eldest daughter and her dentist suitor joust for intellectual and romantic superiority, Shaw mocks the arrogance of human certainty and celebrates chance.

It's all very smart and tart and well-crafted. But as so often with Shaw, admiration of the seamless plot and quick wit is marred by the feeling that he wants to climb out through the mouths of his actors and dazzle us with his cleverness. Quick does her best given that Mrs Clandon has only two emotional states, haughty and aggrieved. The young lovers whip through their witticisms ably enough, but with little feeling.

It's left to Sinéad Matthews and Matthew Dunphy playing Mrs Clandon's precocious twins, to make the play sing. And to Fox, of course. Walter is no less a Shavian puppet than any other character, but in Fox's hands he at least becomes one determined to do things in his own way.

Quibbles aside, I think Peter Hall's mission to remind us of Shaw's intellect and skill is admirable. His compulsion to revisit Waiting for Godot is less comprehensible. The more often I see this oblique testament to endurance in the face of despair, the more convinced I become that it's a play you need to see done well only once.

Yes, it is undeniably significant and still hasn't dated, but its intricate precision defies interpretation: the bad performances stand out, the good and faithful ones blur into one.

I found Hall's new production indistinguishable from his Old Vic revival seven years ago, and for all I know it is exactly the same as the British premiere he helmed in 1955.

If you are a Godot virgin, this is as good a staging as you are likely to see, with Alan Dobie and James Laurenson giving Beckett's two clowns a charming tragicomic pathos, and Terence Rigby a very affecting Pozzo. But if you've seen a good Godot, you'll probably feel you've seen it before.