Reveries about what school teachers get up to with one another behind closed doors are usually the subject of a teenager's daydreaming in geography lessons, but in his play Under the Blue Sky, David Eldridge turns this subject into a quirky and insightful microcosm of our society. At times sordid and graphic, at others heart-wrenchingly sweet, here, insight is offered into the private lives of those enigmatic personas you always knew could get down and dirty. Through a prism of six characters - all teachers - in three half hour duologues, Eldridge explores how the apparent potentates of the classroom act out their power struggles in a domestic setting. The results are comic and embarrassing, but simultaneously offer perceptive reflections upon the problems of this world today.
       First up are Lisa Dillon as gawky Helen and Chris O'Dowd as smarmy Nick. She adores him and he, it seems, couldn't care less. The build up of awkward exchanges and the all-too familiar quips he makes to re-buff her advances are comic and painful. All of this takes place in the immediate aftermath of the 1996 IRA bombing of Canary Wharf - the sound of which has opened the play - and though the couple are more interested in their own agenda, one can't help feeling that her tears and neurosis, her neediness, are due in part to the destabilising effects of the monstrosity outside.
       Sex and war - our saviour and our enemy - thread their way right through the play and both are given full effect in the outrageous bedroom scene between Catherine Tate's filthy Michelle and Dominic Rowan's rather repulsive Graham. After such debauchery one can only hope for redemption and the last act offers just that. Although it reveals a sad twist in the tale, this final segment offers a much more optimistic take on life. Francesca Annis steals the show: as the older, wiser Anne, she combines a mysterious sensuality and a charming serenity that are irresistible. Nigel Lindsay as the younger Robert is a perfect counter-part. Their final loving dance, the consummation after so many years spent holidaying together yet apart, creates in the audience a desire for the happy ending that eludes the other characters in the play.
       The invisible backdrop to all this is of course the classroom. Subtle references are made to the pressures felt by teachers in today's world and the controversies surrounding the British school system. Why are these people behaving as immaturely as their charges? Is their dedication to the lives of others at the expense of their own? What does it mean to be teaching the future generations in a world where the future seems so uncertain? Eldridge touches on several themes that plague our society, making this more than just the realisation of a fantasy he had at school twenty years ago. Almost ten years on from its first appearance at the Royal Court, this perceptive and reflective study, steeped against our current poltical climate, is poignant and thought-provoking. Teachers behaving badly? - don't leave it to your imagination any longer: working with this strong cast, director Anna Mackmin's startling West End revival of Eldridge's Under the Blue Sky is not just funny but very clever too.
Florence Mackenzie