THERE are times at the theatre when you desperately, desperately want a production to come together and be a huge success but for some reason, usually completely unidentifiable, it just doesn’t.

For me, this was the case with Abergavenny Theatre Group’s Lady in the Van, which played at the town’s Borough Theatre last week.

Despite some strong performances in a difficult to stage play, for some reason all the pieces didn’t quite come together and it lacked the essential chemistry needed to make it truly memorable and at times failed to capture the cadence of Bennett’s idiosyncratic writing.

The central triumvirate of Cecilia Bawler as Miss Shepherd and Andrew Fowler and Leighton Martin as the two Alan Bennetts worked hard to bring the eccentric characters to life and by and large were successful but lacked strong support from the ensemble cast which left some moments feeling flat.

Les Hayes and Laura Iwanski - normally strong performers - seems uneasy with the characters and failed to make much of an impression, while Janine Davies made the most of a something and nothing part as did Falesha Lewis.

That said, I loved the counterpoint set - the van design was excellent and gave the audience an insight into Ms Shepherd’s strange existence as opposed to Bennett’s cosy study.

For me sadly, the most unsettling part of the evening however, was the gratuitous use of the ‘C-word’ which seemed to serve no purpose other than to shock.

I’m far from being a prude and fully appreciate the need for strong language when it is called for by the script and is within the intent of the writer but in this context it seemed out of place and was a jarring moment, which I don’t remember in the original script and is what I ended up taking away from the evening.

Sadly for Abergavenny Theatre Group this was a production, which not unlike Ms Shepherd’s van, seemed disappointingly to have stalled at the kerb.