The Opposite Sex

Heard the one about the communist, the yuppie, the marriage-guidance counsellor and the Avon Lady? Theirs is the running gag that constitutes David Tristram's piquant comedy of relationship faux pas, delivered here with a sure-footedness and timing that don't always come as part of the ticket price in amateur dramatics.

Two couples spend an evening playing out a domestic dinner-date disaster. Tension and French-fry flinging turn to foot-in-throat (never mind mouth) embarrassment, excoriating abuse and finally punches as all four realise they are in an eternal square of marital misery.

Blustering, but later angst-afflicted, young executive Mark (Michael Clements) is falsely accused of seducing his secretary by his holier-than-thou wife Vicky (Cath Willacy), an expert in other people's problems who turns out to have feet of clay, or at least sticky fingers, when it comes to Eric, the sneering, Che Guevara T-shirt-wearing commie vegetarian.

The monument to Eric and Vicky's trysts is the shattered suspension of Eric's Mazda, while even Lisa Li as his 20-watt-witted Avon Lady wife Judith (Mark: 'I hope you both like Puccini.' Judith: 'We're not fussy, we'll eat anything.') has a bit of a history - and it's with Mark.

The comedy is sometimes slapstick and the violence more Keystone Kops than political riot, but the opening performance - slick and quickly into its stride - deserved its full house.

Steven Lewis stole the show with an effortless transformation into Eric. Boozy and not particularly choosy in the auxiliary lovers department, opinionated and strident, Eric is an aggressive Green with a superiority complex. All that's missing from Lewis' performance are the Doc Marten boots.