Lady Cora’s a hoot in this punchy satire

DOWNTON’S elizabeth McGovern is back in Yasmina Reza’s send-up of rightthinking middle classes. She’s a hoot.

First seen in this production two years ago, McGovern, pictured, steals the show as the mother of an 11-year- old boy attacked by the son of another middleclass couple. The bid to find a civilised solution escalates into marital breakdown as social mores, interior design and cupcake recipes become weaponised.

The play was written in 2006 and is slightly showing its age. The middleclass obsessions then were the war in Darfur and phone etiquette. Now we can add Trump and political correctness to that list. And there is one unprintable word in Christopher Hampton’s translation which should be cut.

Otherwise Lindsay Posner’s production is still painfully recognisable, on Peter McKintosh’s elegant set.

McGovern is refined but volatile. As the mother with all the right opinions on geo-politics, she has the manner of one talking to aliens. And Nigel Lindsay, as her paunchy husband, is a surprisingly good match.

As the father of the offending child, Simon Paisley Day is a corporate stick insect. His blood temperature appears low until his phone falls in a vase and triggers an impressive Basil Fawlty-style meltdown. But even more impressive is Samantha Spiro, as his wife, vomiting ( over McGovern’ s precious collection of art books) when it all gets too much for her. At 90 minutes without an interval, it could do with being broken up. But this middle-class cage fight is very satisfying indeed.

God of Carnage visits Cambridge and Kingston next.