This is a quiet and easy-watching play based on Rosamunde Pilcher’s 1987 novel of the same name. The stage adaptation – directed by David Taylor – is true in style, mood and content to the original novel and also to those earlier Mills and Boon romances Rosamunde wrote under the name of ‘Jane Fraser’.

Set largely in Cornwall, the narrative passes by slowly and calmly as a day on the Southern English coast does too. Three generations explore the links they share through the memories and paintings of Lawrence Stern – Penelope’s father and a member of the Newlyn Arts Club during the Second World War. Penelope, played by Rosemary Leach (who in my opinion saved the entire play with her warm characterisation and gentle sense-of-humour), has discharged herself from hospital and returned to her grand house and garden in Cornwall. On the walls hangs her father’s painting ‘The Shell Seekers’, a painting saturated with an emotional value that is revealed through a number of ‘flash-back’ scenes. We meet her family; her daughter Olivia who is an ambitious 1980s era magazine editor, Nancy the eldest daughter who is a Hyacinth Bucket caricature of prim and proud living and finally her entrepreneurial (in a scheming kind of way) son, Noel. Reading in the paper the Sotheby’s valuation of a Lawrence Stern on the market, each offspring takes a new interest in the health and well-being of their fading mother, whilst keeping a keen eye of the canvas of The Shell Seekers. A constant dialogue of who is being selfless and selfish passes between the characters and of their different ideas of ‘doing the best by’ mother – as Penelope says “Nancy does always want to help so badly, and that, I am afraid, is what she always ends up doing”….

There is also a happy-ending romance feel all round; dashing young gardeners and valiant soldiers, innocent young girls and the wise elders who have loved and lost. There is life and there is death. The Shell Seekers has it all.

The set is very well polished, consisting of a number of frames with trompe l’oeil ‘backdrops’ painted inside to give depth to each scene. In front of the painting the simple use of a chair is functional and also carefully chosen to represent the character that claims it as their seat – George’s antique leather armchair in his library or Penelope’s floral sofa propped with cushions and comfort. However, having found this cunning use of scenery, be prepared for a rapid flaunting of it, in multiple changes that make you feel dizzy.

Demographically, Cornwall has the highest percentage of over 65s in Britain, statistically, so does The Playhouse during this show. It certainly holds a great appeal to a certain target audience, those of you who can laugh at jokes such as “at the great old age of 58 you should know. Yet great old age is a whole contradiction in itself”, or at the idea of using value tonic in a gin and tonic, then this is the play for you. It certainly was a play with a calm and warm level of entertainment, in an anaesthetic kind of way.

Rachel Lackie, 25.08.04