Kristin’s left to moulder away among the antiques

The Hand Of God/ The Outside Dog (Bridge Theatre, London) Verdict: Loveless Bennett ★★☆☆☆

KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS can be seen live at London’s Bridge Theatre, reprising her vinegary turn in The Hand Of God (first seen on the BBC this summer), in the latest pairing of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads monologues.

It’s as though her character from 1994’s Four Weddings And A Funeral had grown, in the intervening decades, into an embittered old antiques dealer.

Celia ( Scott Thomas) alternates between sneering at her ignorant customers, and enduring long, lonely vigils as she waits for those same ignoramuses to buy some of Bitter: Scott Thomas as Celia her ‘good cottage furniture’. I thought we’d reached a low point when she starts casting a covetous eye over the furniture of a dying neighbour, from which she hopes to make a mint.

But worse follows, when she’s given the framed drawing of a single finger, which she judges to be of little value and even less taste.

Scott Thomas is effortlessly withering, with her aristocratic hooter and crystal consonants — even if she’s sometimes a little hard to hear. But Celia, in pink cashmere, quilted gilet, flat shoes and Liberty print skirt, is treated with disdain by Bennett, who is himself a connoisseur of antiques.

Nor is there much relief in the evening’s curtain raiser, which stars Rochenda Sandall as a feisty but downtrodden working-class Leeds woman who comes to suspect that her slaughterman husband could be a serial killer.

This one is played out as a dark psychological thriller, in Nadia Fall’s sharply drawn production. But I found both offerings more than a little loveless.

The hand Of God/The Outside Dog runs until September 26. Book tickets at bridgetheatre.co.uk.