Best known for Pack of Lies (1983) and Breaking the Code (1986), Hugh Whitemore has followed up last year's A Letter of Resignation with the engrossing Disposing of the Body, having its premiere at the intimate, 174-seat Hampstead Theatre. It is a sort of companion to Pack of Lies, since both deal with the relationships of neighbors and with personal betrayal. Henry Preece, forced into early retirement, moves from London with his wife Angela to a country home in Gloucestershire, where his sister Kate lives. There they become good friends of their neighbors, French teacher Alexander Barley and his wife Joanna, while their son Ben is off doing medical research in Los Angeles.
Henry hires Joanna to do periodic secretarial work, and they wind up having a flaming affair (it's nice to see that adultery isn't always confined to the young). At the end of the first act, Angela goes on a shopping trip to London and fails to return. More I shall not reveal -- except to say that Whitemore could have come up with a better title.
The director has assembled an unusually solid cast. Stephen Moore is adept at conveying Henry's mental twists and turns, and so is David Horovitch as the genial Alexander who eventually learns of his wife's infidelity. Charlotte Cornwell properly makes Angela something of a high-strung kvetcher, and Gemma Jones nicely slips into her unflamboyant passion. Ben Porter brings strength to the Preeces' son, no more so than when he upbraids his dad, "You're not a human being, you're my father. Fathers don't fuck the next-door neighbour."
Ken Drury is a noteworthy cop who, amusingly, gave up philosophy and became a policeman so he wouldn't "have to worry about what's right and what's wrong -- the law does that for me." There is fine support from Joanna McCallum as Kate, who has a secret of her own, and from James Benson as Bassett, a moralizing hotel manager. Tom Piper has designed a versatile cubistic set, whose pastel tones change under Mick Hughes' lighting. This play seems headed for an extended life.
