Wolves at the Window

Wolves at the Window is built around the satiric tales of Saki (or Hector Hugh Monroe), who delighted in savaging the facade of Edwardian respectability, contrasting nature’s tooth and claw with the barbarous insanities of civilized society. Toby Davies’ adaptation handles interlocking sketches with wit and skill, so that recurring characters are greeted with chuckles of recognition, like the familiar grotesques of some terrifying extended family.

The four performers shift between these monstrous personae with verve, stamina and confidence. The girls seem to have the most fun, and are the more accomplished clowns, although Gus Brown does a nice line in animal impersonations, and enjoys himself massively as a suave, knowing cat with unexpected, and not altogether welcome, social skills. Anna Francolini is querulous, beady-eyed and batty in a succession of meticulously imagined and immaculately executed performances. Sarah Moyle tends towards plummy, toothy matrons, nicely catching the undertone of wistfulness beneath their irrepressible, eccentric exteriors. Both actresses have the air of determined entomologists, skewering their targets like a collection of gleaming insects.

The overall feeling is of parlour games being played with fierce concentration and finesse. Although there are occasional resonances with the darker corners of contemporary experience, all the players are far too polite to allow these uncomfortable moments to obtrude for long. Wolves at the Window works best when it’s dealing with domestic absurdity, with spouses and children and pets behaving bizarrely. There are hysterically funny passages, some memorable character performances, and a general sense of highly choreographed dottiness. The episodic structure of the evening is well supported by Maureen Freedman’s versatile set and a striking lighting design from Richard Howell with a real sense of narrative and comic timing.

This is social satire with its claws safely trimmed – all the better to frolic upon the Axeminster. Still there’s lots to enjoy in this sharp-eyed, sharp-witted show. Some of the satirical prey we’re stalking may be a little long in the tooth, but Wolves at the Window proves that there are plenty of larks to be had in the hunting of geriatric lions.