MANY will go find their way to Malvern to see two big stars of the small screen but it is to be hoped that they come away enriched by the remarkable talent of a challenging and entertaining contemporary playwright.

The performances of Sian Phillips and Peter Bowles are just what you would expect from two big-hitters of stage and screen - assured, accomplished and a model of the actors' craft.

Yet the star of the show is the script by Yasmin Reza, the French writer whose masterwork, Art, is etching itself into theatre history.

This clever and engaging play features two people on a train, who, for the most part, express only their inmost thoughts and only at the last make any connection with each other. If that sounds an odd premise for a play, then it is, but then so is a play about a man who spends a fortune on a blank white canvas which is claimed to be a work of art.

Reza examines the mind of a woman faced with the dilemma of whether to own up to the fact that she is reading a novel written by the man sitting opposite her, while the man himself is more concerned with his daughter's forthcoming marriage and his laxatives. It is both familiar, in that we are all reluctant to connect with strangers, and alien in that Reza's view is very Gallic, very philosophically French. Well worth a visit, and at 80 minutes with no interval there's plenty of time for a curry and a pint afterwards.

The play runs until Saturday. Review by STEVE EVANS