Sapphic classic played straight

The birds chirp merrily and innocence is in full bloom in Frank Marcus's witty critique of safe-as-a-teacosy England. When this classic lesbian drama first appeared in 1965, critics were effusive about its comic portrayal of a forthright, beer-swilling woman - known by friends as George - who is strikingly different from her persona as an apple-cheeked district nurse, Sister George, on Radio 4.

Hailed by The Times as "the best comedy by a new writer to appear in the West End for a very long time", the needlesharp script points up the hypocrisies of a Sixties BBC with a head-in-the-sand attitude to homosexuality. BBC executive Mrs Mercy Croft (Pauline Whitaker) displays a cat-like complacency about Applehurst - a fictional, happily heterosexual village

where Sister George rides around singing hymns on a moped. Yet, visiting George to reprimand her for drunken misdemeanours with a pair of novices, she shows more than a motherly interest in George's young girlfriend Alice Childie McNaught.

Unfortunately, the London Classic Theatre Company's production of this strongly Ortonesque play seems to be suffering from a distinct case of tranquillisers in the teapot. As George, Anna Ziman does her best to bring a sense of thigh-slapping jollity and domineering eccentricity to the action, yet Suzannah Pilcher's Alice - who is admittedly supposed to be passive and childlike - too often lacks the energy to sustain her scenes.

Ziman might also have made more of a contrast between her character's hectoring, bullish private persona, and the twittering tweeness of the BBC's much-loved Sister George. Yet the essential absurdity of the contrast between her real and her fictional personalities is lost, so Marcus's point that she is more lovable away from the radio does not ring true enough.

It is a shame, because this is a script well worth unearthing. For now, it is probably best to watch the Beryl Reid film version.

The Killing Of Sister George