Play review – “Perfect Skin” by Janis Baldois based on a novel by Nick Earls

Anyone who thinks adapting books into plays is easy should look at this version of Nick Earls novel. Its fourth time unlucky, with Phil Dean opting out from the job and the play paying the price. The result is clunky, leaden, and repetitive (stop mentioning the cat Flap, please), with seeming great slabs of novel dialogue simply shoved in the script. Earls’ novel mightn’t have been a masterpiece (grieving widow finds new love, not the most original idea – the “twist” of him not actually liking his dead wife that much isn’t much of a twist, it only makes things easier for the couple) but it deserved better than this.