Alan Ayckbourn writes plays like the rest of us write shopping lists.

Sugar Daddies, at Malvern until Saturday, is the most recent of more than 60 plays.

Sasha is the latest in a long literary line of country bumpkins up in the smoke sharing a flat with her older half-sister, Chloe: TV researcher and a mix of perma-PMT and TNT.

Country-kind, she brings an old Father Christmas (it's that time of year) who's been bumped by a car into the flat. But 'uncle' Val is not at all what he appears.

Her kindness leads to a relationship that changes her life, and her character, or so, at first we are led to believe.

A sinister man with an eye-patch moves into the flat below and layers are peeled off the onion of plot.

This is an economical, portable piece, one set, cast of five, two acts, four scenes each and there is a laid-back, unforced fluency about the production, action and words.

Anna Brecon, Eliza Hunt, are both OTT while Rex Garner's uncle Val is a mix of humour, charm, menace and dignity.

Like ballet's Odette/Odile, Sasha is a two-in-one part. In both, the bewitching Alison Parjeter dances away with the evening.

Henry Ford