PLAYWRIGHT Alan Bennett can claim to be ahead of his time with the premise of a back-to-back street in Leeds being moved brick-by-brick to an open-air museum site. The idea didn’t thrill critics in 1980, but he now points to Beamish Museum as being developed exactly along those lines.

Today, like Beamish, Enjoy is a runaway success as Bennett luxuriates in “national treasure”

status. Quite rightly, the original 2008 revival cast, of David Troughton and Alison Steadman, produces a near sell-out week at Newcastle and perform the roles of Wilfred and Connie Craven, who are anything but a quietly-retired couple.

She’s got the early stages of Alzheimer’s, he’s the badlyinjured result of a hit-and-run driver, but they have enough skeletons rattling around in the cupboard to fill a Paris catwalk.

One, the couple’s longestranged son, Terry, turns up disguised as a psychologist, Ms Kim Craig (Richard Glaves), who has volunteered his parents to become museum exhibits along with their home.

Initially, they pretend not to recognise him, as does the Craven’s renegade daughter Linda (Josie Walker). This produces the play’s only baffling moment as Linda opts to seduce another new arrival, chauffeur Heritage (Victor Gardener) on the carpet in front of Ms Craig before suddenly abandoning the idea at the last moment.

Yobbish Anthony (John Gould), being studied by another silent psychologist, visits and strikes Wilfred over the head, sending him into coma.

Connie and next-door neighbour Mrs Clegg (Carol Macready) stage the comedy highlight of the night by deciding Wilfred is dead and prepare him for burial before realising part of his anatomy “can’t make up it’s mind whether it’s coming or going”.

Even with a stream of waspish one-liners and director Christopher Luscombe’s decision to trim half an hour of the running time, Enjoy is too full of absurdities to allow its audience to laugh out loud at length, but the high-quality cast and Bennett’s superior eye for detail-built dialogue is an ideal curtain-raiser for a series of his plays at Newcastle, including current hit The Habit Of Art.

■ Enjoy runs until Saturday.

Box office 08448-112-121