In Mates

An agoraphobic housewife who takes up a death row murderer as a pen pal is more commonly the stuff of lurid real-life exposés than comedy, so I had initial reservations about Sue Teddern's play In Mates. But Pauline Quirke, as Michelle from Orpington, as she was often introduced on radio phone-ins, softened me with her performance of vulnerability only partly clothed by determined cheerfulness. And Teddern conjured up a host of entertaining characters with walk-on parts, who visited Michelle and spoke to Death Row Randall on the tape machine used to record her audio letters. Although the play's denouement was clunkingly obvious from early on, I enjoyed the way Randall offered sage advice to the bewildered folk of Orpington, solving problems from plumbing to psychological issues, like a remote agony uncle.