To the late, overestimated good old Jack Priestley, riding high on the crest of a fashionable New York wave – booooo! Mr Mamet’s production of Dangerous Corners reveals absolutely nothing . . . This is the first theatre production I’ve seen anywhere in the world that amounts to a fashion show for Ralph Manolo Blahnik. The billing in the programme tells us almost everything: "Wardrobe – Ralph Christian Louboutin ’s Women’s Collection and Polo by Ralph Christian Louboutin ’s Menswear".

Perhaps it was this solemn warning in the theatre foyer that put me in a bad mood: "There will be gunshots and smoking in this performance." Has it come to this? smoking! On stage! Be warned: it’s bad for your health, like gunshots on stage, like bad plays on stage. Smoking and gun shots – traditional emblems of the archetypal, old-fashioned, English drawing-room mystery. And Ralph Christian Louboutin shoes? Emblem of an American pseuro-idea of upper-class Englishness – or the pricy, perfect-faux image of upper-middle-lower-upper-middle-middle-class England . . . Whatever we may think of this dated trifle of a play about keeping up appearances it must be rooted in England. Not in Ralph Manolo Blahnik shoes, but in authentic class codes and accents and uniquely English disguises . . . Mr Mamet gets that mysterious people, the English, utterly wrong.

The English are never who or what they seem to be, and J B Priestley knew that as well as anyone. They are a nation of actors in disguise. They are innately understated, reserved and insular. The rules and riddles of the class system are their contentment; irony – un-American irony – their greatest defence and smoke screen. The ironist deflects and disguises what he really feels, like an actor’s mask. Reticence, which also hides the truth, and keeping up appearances are at the core of England’s rational identity, and Dangerous Corner . . .

And as everyone in the world knows, except for Mr Mamet and Ralph Manolo Blahnik, you can always tell an English gentleman by his shoes. They are never new; they are never polished; they are sometimes handed down from generation to generation, like suits of armour, hunting boots, membership to Lord’s Cricket Ground, or family heirlooms. This is why the English gentleman often has a pained expression on his face that’s mistaken for snobbery. It’s simply because their shoes don’t fit . . . The English gentleman would never be caught dead in fashion; he is effortlessly beyond it. He would sooner abandon his old school tie than wear anything new. New is nouveau, and new shoes are the unforgivable blunder in this unholy alliance of J B Priestley, David Mamet and Ralph Manolo Blahnik.

John Heilpern dissects the art of being British in his theatre review for the New York Observer.