Three Hens in a Boat review – Jerome K Jerome inspires funny voyage of family reflection

Jerome K Jerome was not benignant astir Reading successful Three Men successful a Boat. Sculling on the Thames, his narrator observes however the municipality “does its champion to spoil and sully and marque hideous arsenic overmuch of the stream arsenic it tin reach” yet concedes it is “good-natured capable to support its disfigured look a bully woody retired of sight”.

Reading Rep, which co-produces this caller drama with Newbury’s Watermill, does not clasp a grudge. Camille Ucan’s play is bookended by a rapturous punctuation astir sailing from the 1889 caller and adjacent has a skiff named aft the writer – although, arsenic 1 quality observes, Jerome “sounds similar a spot of a twat”.

Ucan plays Jay, who dons glittery willy boppers and embarks connected a hen bash on the stream with her mother, Gloria (Verona Rose), and grandma Claudette (Ellen O’Grady). The travel has been planned to toast each 3 women’s upcoming weddings but questions bent successful the air. When volition Jay present them to her fiance? Why does Gloria moan astir her betrothed? And what is Claudette hiding among their copious luggage?

Against Jasmine Swan’s chocolate-box pastoral backdrop, nether Jonathan Chan’s woozy lighting, the communicative wends its mode done the archetypal fractional with acquainted intergenerational comedy. There are sly jibes, overmuch nagging and immoderate sulking, with Gloria sounding similar a needy kid and Jay assuming the relation of patience-stretched parent. Ucan has jettisoned astir of the caller but kept the consciousness of travellers sharing stories and included an unconventional supporting relation for Montmorency the fox-terrier.

Winning performances … Three Hens successful a Boat. Photograph: Pamela Raith

Abigail Pickard Price’s accumulation has winning performances, particularly from O’Grady arsenic the stiletto-wearing grandma fixed to pulling rank, whose method knowhow extends to “Facebook, Kindle and cappuccino machine” but not email. Her memories of leaving the Caribbean for England typify the play’s reflective essence. When the travel enters much farcical territory, the results are acold choppier. Although interspersed with bursts of dancefloor music, the play ne'er seems authentically raucous and calls retired for a deliriously comic acceptable portion that does not arrive.

After the interval, Ucan delivers immoderate knotty revelations successful the crippled and her dialog is sharply attuned to parental power and intervening expectations – down to who their children wed and however they take to bash so. Jerome’s caller ensured readers it was a enactment of “simple truthfulness” and that’s often the lawsuit successful this endearing escapade that brings ripples of laughter.