Enjoy by Alan Bennett

Gielgud Theatre & UK tour (Bath Theatre Royal Productions)

Director Christopher Luscombe, Lighting Paul Pyant

Cast includes; Alison Steadman, David Troughton, Josie Walker

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Janet Bird's design cleverly reminds us that there is a conscious theatricality about this cramped working-class pad destined to end up a museum piece. After its short tour, this joyous production should move lock, stock and barrel into the West End.

***** Guardian

 

Design is key here, and the set - designed by Janet Bird - is wonderful. On one level it is a house as normal as they come, then it is skilfully taken apart to a fantastic climax.

The Stage

 

Set designer Janet Bird provides a final coup de théâtre, as the family home proves a flimsy shell, gutted of its furniture and with its walls folded back like a flat-pack doll's house in dark vault.

Independent

 

Janet Bird’s set matches the script’s mix of the real and the fanciful: a cross-section of the house, beset by Seventies patterns, is marooned midstage. This heightens the sense of these characters as lab rats, but whether you see them as being at the whim of history or of the writer probably determines whether you’ve bought into Enjoy or not. 

The Times

Photos: Nobby Clark