The Doubtful Guest, Northern Stage, Newcastle

10:03am Thursday 10th April 2008

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STEPHANIE Maller's low-tech set takes us into an opulent, but quirky, Edwardian living room where most of the set is hung in suspension ready for action at the pull of a rope.

The Bishop family have a parlour-game lifestyle and an annoying habit of telling us what they are going to do, then doing it. They all have exaggerated nuances; Mother skitters across the stage and her husband's melodramatic gait is Pythonesque, with his orange string hair adding colour to the ridiculous. A fabulous performance by Andrew Pembrooke as Father and Stephanie Maller as Mother.

There's lots of comic, repetitive explaining to get through using a chalk board, a doll's house on wheels and a full description of where the story will take place and how each will take the part of the guest in the story telling.

The door bell rings and the invisible guest arrives and, like The Man Who Came To Dinner, is destined never to leave.

This multi-talented cast act, sing and dance in a comic style similar to the silent movie era, but eventually they become frustrated with their strange guest who, at the very last moment, takes the form of a cute, woolly penguin with a Dr Who scarf.

The Doubtful Guest, inspired by the writer Edward Gorey, is an utterly charming, dream-like adaptation specially written for the Plymouth-based company by their resident artistic director, Shon Dale-Jones.

* Until Saturday at 7pm, matinee 2pm. Tickets: £5-£18.

Box office: 0191-230-5151