It is a truth not yet universally acknowledged that a widower in possession of a large Hampstead mansion must be in want of a wife. The widower in Rosemary Friedman’s new play is Topher Osgood, a judge understandably still grieving the very recent death of his bird-watching wife. Her cardigan still drapes the chair she sat in, her tennis racket has not been moved from its place against the wall, and he finds comfort speaking to her urn of ashes, prominently displayed, when agitated by crisis.

As An Eligible Man opens he is worrying about where to buy socks, but graver problems are awaiting him. His neighbour brings down a school friend from Bingley to cook him borscht and gâteaux; the novelist renting the basement weepingly reveals her marital sorrows; and a colleague’s widow invites him to house parties in Berkshire, with a prospect of winter in Antigua to follow. How will this contemporary Paris choose between these three flawed goddesses? Or will he, like the wild goose described in one of his wife’s books, forego a second mate?

After an awkward beginning where significant facts come too thickly and too quickly the play becomes quite interesting, for a while. Chiefly this is because Graham Seed gives a clear and persuasive account of the sort of person Osgood is. He leaves questions unanswered, but this feels true to his state of mind rather than to a playwright’s wish to puff up suspense. His face is thoughtful, attentive when obliged to be, and he is well described by his troubled daughter (an excellent performance by Patricia Potter) as “droll in an odd sort of way”. Listeners to The Archers will recognise his voice as that of Nigel Pargetter.

What weakens the development is the clichéd portrayal of the three contestants for his hand. The actresses do what they can with roles that could well be called Mrs Down-to-Earth, Mrs Keen-to-be-Happy and Lady Most-Superior, but Osgood’s carefully eager response to their wiles is seldom credible, and when the women are together (in this house with seemingly ever-open doors), my, how they bitch!

The manoeuvrings before their increasingly unresponsive host come to seem as improbable as the snow that had apparently been falling for days on Hampstead at the time of the funeral.

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