I MIGHT have thought twice before going to see this play had I been half-awake and realised it was by Alan Ayckbourn.

Normally I find his work tedious, predictable and cliched - and not best suited to amateur theatre.

But this, the second production of The Rose's resident group The Nonentities' season - their first in the main house - proved a pleasant surprise.

The usual ingredients are there; the middle class, middle England suburban setting and the crucial misunderstandings.

But instead of grating on the senses I was stunned to find the play actually made me laugh more than once, thanks in no small part to scene-stealing stalwart Colin Young, The Nonentities' chairman, whose performance was delightfully pompous.

The comic timing of both Young as Graham and his on-stage brother in-law Paul Thomson as Leonard was spot on and really carried the script, although the latter occasionally came across as being a little too worldly-wise for an apparently insecure poetic type.

And the blurb's boast that audiences would be left feeling they had spent the evening with "familiar friends whose foibles you know and accept" largely rang true thanks to effective characterisations from fellow cast members Joan Wakeman, Lucy Heath and David Claridge.

But I felt the garden gnome could have been given a more pivotal role. AMD