But why not? Amanda, like Hyacinth, is intent on Keeping Up Appearances, and is just as bossy. And by bringing the comedy into focus in the American play, Ms Blethyn and director Braham Murray heighten the impact of the character's final, shattering rage.

Amanda is a deserted wife in Williams's autobiographical drama, a faded beauty now intent on finding 'gentlemen callers' for her physically and emotionally limping daughter.

Ms Blethyn, the former Chichester amateur who became an Oscar-nominated star, is naturally the dominant force on stage.

Her repertoire also includes the power to flit between exaggerated bodily gestures and a coquettish brand of flirtatiousness that is as entertaining to the audience as it is acutely embarrassing to her son and daughter.

But the other three members of the cast are no less effective in their different ways.

Perhaps the pick of them is Emma Hamilton as the daughter.

She journeys from painful shyness through gradual awakening to the most touching, dignity in loss – a dignity as fragile as her glass collection.

The story is partly narrated by the son (Mark Arends), who in this production appears aptly as a kind of a circus master magically flicking the switches of the characters' lives.

Until Saturday.