Losing Louis is Simon Mendes Da Costa's second play but he needs to learn to use the blue pencil much, much more.

What we have here are two brothers and their wives back in the old family home to bury the brothers' father.

This is the first time the brothers have met since their mother's funeral ten years before. And if that had been the whole of the play, then Losing Louis could have been a great comedy.

Funerals are a great source of fun as well as sadness, tremendous material for family rows and the revelation of secrets.

Given that the family is Jewish, he father is being buried in a local hurch on the Sabbath day and in he middle of a rainstorm, the otential is superb.

But in this one-set play it all takes place in the master bedroom Da Costa wants us to have more and more.

Thus, we get all the goings on of the aftermath of the funeral but the writer also adds in flashback scenes to the late-Fifties. All the characters' infidelities, miscarriages and tragedies are detailed in a confusing manner.

It is these scenes which slow down the play and make it tedious and irritating. Da Costa should have blue-pencilled these or rather, given the woodenness of the performances, wielded a chainsaw.

None of the younger characters are convincing and I could have cheerfully strangled the whole crew.

But what lifts the quality of the play are the performances of the more mature actors, led by a stunning performance from Alison Steadman.

Wearing an overtight black dress and with her shock of blonde hair, she dominates every scene she's in with some lively physical acting and an accent which almost reprises that of her greatest role, of Beverley in Abigail's Party.

She is the main reason to see this play, although she is ably supported by the brothers at war, David Horovitch and David Cardy, while Rula Lenska elegantly drapes herself all over the set.

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