A year of birthdays is the focus of Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s 1976 comedy Just Between Ourselves. Over the course of 12 months in a chaotic garage, we are brought into the lives of two couples who have more in common than they first think.
London Classic Theatre, which celebrated its 32nd birthday in 2025 and 25th as a touring company, has a mission to bring classic and modern texts to life—and to make its productions “accessible to as many people as possible”. The company is not new to Acykbourn’s writing, having produced his plays on their 15th and 20th anniversaries of touring.
Just Between Ourselves treads the fine line between comedy and tragedy, in the usual Ayckbourn fashion, but sees him tackle the topic of mental health and emotional distress surrounding two married couples. In this case, it particularly highlights women’s roles in a ‘traditional’ marriage from the 1970s.
Dennis, an exuberant, ignorant and overbearing husband, feels more at home in his garage than inside the four walls of his house. We are told a lot about Vera, his wife, without ever revealing too much. But when he strikes up an unlikely friendship with local Neil—married to Pam—we see the cracks beginning to show with not just Dennis’s marriage but Neil’s too.
The first half of the show struggles to find its feet. The aforementioned fine line feels a little unbalanced through the lack of insight into Vera and Pam’s perspective. The unevenness becomes less problematic in the second half, as we see the wives’ perspective showcased, as well as the burden that mental health has placed on the marriages. As the tension increases, we begin to witness the full scale of the effects of Dennis’s ignorance.
What struck me as a younger viewer was how an approach to a topic which would have been groundbreaking and challenged the norms of being a housewife in the 1970s still resonates today. Not necessarily through the mechanics of the relationships, but how naïvety to mental health issues can multiply the damage on relationships and our approach to everyday life. This lands well through the convincing performances of Tom Richardson (Dennis), Holly Smith (Vera), Joseph Clowser (Neil), Helen Phillips (Pam) and Connie Walker (Marjorie).
Just Between Ourselves hits most of the right notes and feels like a worthwhile revival of one of Ayckbourn’s lesser-known plays. Still going at 86, the prolific playwright can be proud of his ahead-of-the-curve take on mental health and the stigma attached all these years later.