Smaller starved of comedy

When I go to the theatre I do not want to watch scenes in which an immobile old woman is hauled on to a disabled lavatory to evacuate her bowels, thereby to attempt the raising of laughter in the stalls.

Nor do I want to witness the old woman's bottom being wiped by her daughter, with further unmentionable actions performed for our socalled further amusement.

This disgusting, little comedy, a first play by Carmel Morgan, who writes scripts for Coronation Street, does not, though, revolt me because it introduces defecation to the stage. I can put up with that and even with the waste of Dawn French's comic talents.

What I find repellent is that in Smaller, Morgan has no bigger purpose than to make fun of the indignities of decrepit, dependent old age.

She wanted to write about a disabled pensioner and her carer-daughter, but soon makes it clear she has no real interest in any such thing.

We discover next to nothing about the life or illness of Morgan's Maureen Clulow (note the hilarious surname), who lives with her teacher daughter, Bernice (Dawn French).

Beyond the gauze curtains of Jonathan Fensom's on-the-cheap, minimal domestic set Maureen's other daughter, Alison Moyet's Cath who is abroad on showbusiness, appears from time to time to sing her heart out for no particular reason.

Moyet's role, put over with pert and cockney jauntiness, feels as if added on at the last moment. It sticks out like an under-used accessory.

June Watson's Maureen, whose mind works while her legs do not, sits close to the window all day, unbelievably without television, radio, DVDs, books, newspapers or magazines for company.

Whenever French's loyal, long-suffering, put-upon Bernice returns home, Maureen at once embarks upon a loquacious, whining stream of consciousness from which there is no respite and little pleasure.