Longing at the Hampstead Theatre was a pleasing enough piece, well acted, with a notable cast including Tamsin Greig and John Sessions. Its a play made out of two Chekhov stories spliced together. But it was neither funny nor dramatic; more whimsical than anything else. A Moscow lawyer Kolya returns to his home town and promises to help friends who have hit money problems because of the adventures of alcoholic waster Sergei. Sergei's wife is despairing at him frittering away her family fortune on hair-brained investments, but her younger sister is more stoic. But she unaccountably falls in love with the lawyer (difficult to see why as he is far from handsome). They are saved from total ruin by the local wealthy arrviste (John Sessions) who buys their estate for the benefit of his awful daughter and her young beau, who in turn falls for the younger sister who is in love with the lawyer And Tamsin Greig's character is also in love with the lawyer which is reciprocated except in deed. So in the end, nearly everyone is in love with someone other than the person they are with.
I pointed this out to my companion, who merely said "That's what life is like, isn't it?" God one gets cynical when one hits 50.
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