The daughter Jo Theaker and the tutor Martin Hutson.

The truce remains intact until the arrival of a German tutor who acts as the unfortunate catalyst of a full family melt down.

As relationships spiral out of control, the weekend retreat rapidly becomes a battle field.

The father Stanley Harrington, played by Richard Heffer, is constantly denigrated by his snobbish wife about his "shoddy and vulgar furniture" business. His return fire is aimed squarely at his sensitive son.

Mrs. Harrington played superbly by Jenny Quayle, is an irritating mixture of vanity and egocentricity. She bewails "marrying into the furniture business" and yet uses her husband's buying power to finance her snobbish aspirations.

Mother and son: played by Jenny Quayle and Oliver Dimsdale

Her affectation smothers her son and little toy "Cossack", Clive.

Played by Oliver Dimsdale, Clive is a delicate character kept an emotional child by his mother's doting and lambasted by his father's need for a man's man of the world. He is a prisoner between his parents in "The culture war with me as ammunition."

The resulting character is a delicious mixture of cynical intellectualism and childish tantrum, rebellion and total submission, a character who is cursed with seeing "what's true and what isn't." But who is himself blind to the essential truth.

The catalyst for the action is the German tutor played by Martin Hutson who is always on the outer edges of the play balanced on hard chairs against walls on the edge of the set. The "excluded person" is an essential role in the play. In the words of the mother, "It takes a continental to show just how ignorant we are."

All three of the main characters turn to him for understanding and validation he in turn is looking to each of them for the same. Caught in the cross fire he is the ultimate victim of their vanities.

The superb cast keep you locked into the action as the play slowly develops into a detailed study of a family at war, where the dialogue ranges from the intelligent and eloquent to the banal, but which is always beautifully scripted.