Eduardo de Filippo's Saturday, Sunday, Monday was one of the revelatory joys of Olivier's National Theatre. It is remembered as much for its aroma of steaming ragu wafting over the Old Vic footlights as Joan Plowright in full sail as the family matriarch, and Olivier himself as an old grandfather and one-time hatter with distinctly twitchy fingers any time a fedora comes near him.
Twenty five years on, Chichester's new season - now under the helmsmanship of Andrew Welch - has got off to a jovial, if slightly disappointing, start. It's not that Jude Kelly's production isn't full of the milk of human kindness. De Filippo's comedy, with its warm-hearted, pungent observations on the bickerings and misunderstandings of married and family life, concentrated around a weekend and the Sunday family lunch, is as effervescent as ever and given new life in Jeremy Sams's fresh translation.
Who hasn't felt the keen wind of unappreciation and seen how that grows to aggrieved, self-righteous hurt and worse. De Filippo's Peppino has a bad case of it. Unfortunately, David Suchet's repressed shopkeeper, far too sharply dressed for a man said to be suffering wifely neglect, presents only the outline of an emotional whirlwind of a man in the grip of deep, if humorously described, inner pain. We don't really feel it.
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