Bakersfield Mist by Stephen Sachs, directed by Polly Teale, Kathleen Turner, Ian McDiarmid

Maude, a lived in/life lived, ex-bartender believes she has a genuine Jackson Pollock. Lionel, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has been asked to verify the painting as real or a fake. Their backgrounds are diametrically opposite, but the situation plays out in Maude’s stuffed, trailer-park home and she calls the shots. There is some neat plotting and some implausibility in Stephen Sach’s play. There are a few good lines and a few over-written self-revelations. Yet Kathleen Turner is superb as Maude; while Ian McDiarmid is at his best in Lionel’s more phlegmatic moments. Direction is by Polly Teale, a departure from Shared Experience, in this entertaining two-hander about who and what is real.........