NOTE: This article reviewed three plays: Royal Family, Kiss Me Kate and Star Quality. I deleted the last two reviews.

Let's be clear about what is not going on in "The Royal Family" at the Haymarket. This has nothing at all to do with the ongoing soap-opera at Buckingham Palace. The family here is the Drew-Barrymores, three generations of Broadway's finest, for we are in New York in 1928 and this (in its first London revival in 60 years) is the George Kaufman-Edna Ferber star-dust satire.

The story of a quintessentially theatrical, over-the-top backstage family bickering, bitching, loving, loathing, living and even dying in a luxurious Manhattan apartment has just one running gag, which is that anything this lot does in private is bound to be far more dramatic than even what they do on stage. But the Barrymore connection doesn't run that deep. Although Ethel threatened to sue, Lionel doesn't appear at all and the portrayal of Jack (Toby Stephens in the best performance of the evening) is that of an all-purpose Hollywood swashbuckler who could a few years later equally well have been Errol Flynn.

It is the women, led by Judi Dench, Julia McKenzie and Harriet Walter, who get most of the attention, and this is essentially the play that got us from "Trelawny of the Wells" to David Hare's "Amy's View" in which Dench also scored a considerable hit as another old actress left with an audience but not a life.

The real struggle here is between the theater people, loved despite their arrogant egocentricity, and the "civilians," those unwise enough to try to marry into or just serve a gang of thespians who can only ever notice themselves.

In an all-star cast it is Philip Voss as their old impresario and Emily Blunt as the granddaughter briefly sidetracked into marriage and motherhood who give the most touching performances in this tale of actors trying to live like real people and failing in the attempt.

Thanks to Mike Kennedy for sending this review which appeared in the International Herald Tribune on November 14, 2001.

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