How are your table manners? What if you are sitting with your disparate siblings, their warring spouses, and a hanger-on who can’t quite work out whether he’s part of the family or not? Add in a threatened affair and it’s not likely to be all sweetness and light.

Alan Ayckbourn’s comedy is set in the family’s dining room, pictured, right, as what starts with the promise of a romantic weekend away for Annie, and an escape from duties as carer for her bedridden mother, ends up with an impromptu gathering. Enter brother and sister Reg and Ruth and spouses Sarah and Norman. Tom the vet just happens to be passing, as always.

Local amateur dramatic company Adhoc Theatre deliver a professional show, under the directorship of Graham Paton.

Jude Bucklow is tremendous as the stuck-up, highly strung Sarah. Her powerful, relentless performance never slips, from her whirlwind, nitpicking, entrance to her inevitable emotional breakdown.

By contrast, Victoria Wakefield plays Annie with a wonderful calm, naturalistic style, revealing her vulnerability and loneliness.

Norman, enthusiastically played by Paul Batson, at first seems an unlikely romantic interest, but proves to be the least self-absorbed of the lot. It seems that every woman just yearns for someone, anyone, to pay them some attention except, unfortunately, his wife.

Ayckbourn can always be relied on to provide an entertaining and witty script.

Adhoc does not disappoint with their presentation of his very human characters and tangled relationships.