IF only this play was as good as the reputations of the people in it.

Christopher Cazenove, Edward Hardwicke, Linda Baron (Nurse Gladys Emmanuel in Open All Hours), even Estelle Skornik (Nicole in the Renault Clio ads). Why are they doing this?

Home Truths is not a bad play. In fact it has some telling messages about the way in which we come to terms with our problems and shortcomings. It's all

'meaning of life' stuff, but in the final analysis, who cares?

Apart from Linda Baron's character Alice, and Biddy Hodson's Rosie, there are few characters in this play we can actually empathise with.

Cazenove does a manful job with the lonely Dr of Philosophy, and portrays

this ultimately tragic figure with great sensitivity.

Hardwicke - more famously Dr Watson alongside Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes - skilfully presents the doctor and father of the household as a man hiding behind his silly limericks and jokes.

But after a hard day at the office, I found myself dropping off in the first half, partly because of the long pauses in the play and the quietness of the action on stage.

I tried to wake myself up with a mini ice-cream at the interval and got stung for £3, including one for my wife. It wasn't my night. Nick Jackson

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.