With the sad passing of Rik Mayall I got to wondering where all the characters in The Young Ones would be now. The cynical might say that they would all have sensible jobs, sensible shoes and mortgages but I’m hopeful that at least Nigel Planer’s hippy Neil would still be eating the odd lentil and listening to Hawkwind. Stephen Beresford wouldn’t be so kind. He clearly doesn’t seem to worry that hippies might have sold out so much as imply they were never as they appeared in the first place. And he puts the boot in good and proper.

The Haussman family are gathering in a somewhat enforced fashion to rally round after their mother has just had an operation and a concerned visit/raid from the social services. Penny Tuerk’s Judy would usually be described as the matriach except that the term usually implies leadership and strength, and in this case she seems to be the root cause of everyone’s problems. Rather self regarding she thinks (or thought) of herself as a sort of cross between Rosa Luxemburg and Janis Joplin (with a Snoopy fetish thrown in for good measure) but the result has been neglect and dereliction rather than love and revolution. Her highlights were legion, but considering she was such a livewire I thought her almost but not really death bed scene powered by prescription drugs was the best of the bunch. A strong woman, no doubt but blind to reality. And the sharks are circling in Dartmouth.

Ian Hoare as the local doctor is (or pretends to be?) a former hippy too but turns out to be more estate agent than change agent. No slouch , he worms his way into the affections of both Judy and her daughter Libby with his eyes not really on them so much as the desirable sea view. As coastal GPs go he is more John Bodkin Adams than Doc Marten. Re-named by Judy as “Arjuna” (seer) he certainly has an eye for the main chance. I wondered if there shouldn’t have been a little more bite in the character given his status as a malpractising medic but this was a performance of boldness and deception. It’s a compliment to say that by the end I didn’t believe a word he said.

If anyone was going to see through him it was going to be the resident teenager of the piece Libby’s daughter Summer. And although she came closer than anyone as she advises her mother Libby “Try not to make so much of a fool of yourself this time” ,she was too caught up in the war of the generations to halt the sprial of destruction. I was particularly struck by the way that Helena Franklin managed the transition from surly teenager, all cut off jeans and laddered tights who didn’t want to see her estranged father under any circumstances to know it all teenager in sensible outfit who has completely forgotten all the things that she was against and now likes them an awful lot. It is a challenging task for anyone to age down in this way but I was convinced. You suspected she would end up running things in the end - not that there was anything left to run.

By the end with mother deceased and house prised from the family grasp Libby and brother Nick were left to resume their wanderings. Ros Reeder’s Libby didn’t generate confidence that the next year would by any more successful than any of her previous ones “I’ve been thinking about the West of Ireland... or Greece” she says vaguely and you suspected she wouldn’t get further than Totnes or possibly Paignton zoo, but a tremendous performance made it very easy to like this character permanently a step away from another cliff. Variously forsaken lover, forsaken daughter, forsaken mother and forsaken sister , she was a veritable Queen Midas in reverse but we loved her anyway. My favourite line was in response to her mother’s trendy lefty disowning of the “blood money” from her family’s business:”Don’t be ridiculous mother. They sold curtain rods”, but all of her best lines were delivered to perfection.

Her brother Nick was one of the crosses she had to bear. A rather stereotypical drug addict/alcoholic with a heart of gold and a love of gin, he could wrap his mother round his little finger and you feared for him when she had gone. There was a lot more comedy than tragedy in this performance and Andy Murton’s skill produced, it seemed to me, more of a character than had originally been created, though I wasn’t really convinced by his lovelorn status with regard to Daniel, next door carer and swimming champion played by Chris Sherwood who looked permanently bemused at the goings on, and only really smiled once he’d got out and been round the world by swimming pool.

Taken overall this is a play with quite a few flaws and a rather confused message - at once admiring free spirits and at the same time getting rather huffy with the irresponsibility of it all. Families need fathers, doncha know. And some of the character developments seemed superfluous and distracting. As usual however Roger Beaumont’s direction seemed to get a lot more out of his cast than there sometimes appeared to be extracted from the page. None of the many good lines were in any danger of being wasted. An overly long piece was made more concise and thoughtful and Philip Lindley’s set was out of the top drawer. I liked the soundtrack too, especially the Zombies Time of The Season whose air of dreamy hopelessness was however, at odds with an overachieving production.

Photography by Ruth Anthony