Absolute Hell at The Gift Theatre

It’s London in the summer of 1945. Christine Foskett tends bar at La Vie en Rose, a homey private club where servicemen and bohemians drink rye, gin-and-French and black-market brandy. Ackland beautifully explores the necessity for escape and the awful loneliness that goes along with it, and his cast of characters includes the most powerful of critics, the most washed-up writers and American air force officers who have no interest in becoming movie stars. Outside the ground floor window, the neighborhood prostitute turns 25 tricks a night and a deranged elderly woman cries out that Jesus was born on Boxing Day.