A CRICKET MATCH. To 3 May 2007.
Scarborough/Bowness-on-Windermere/Newcastle-under-Lyme
A CRICKET MATCH
(Intimate Exchanges)
by Alan Ayckbourn
Stephen Joseph Theatre (The Round) To 20 September 2006 then Bowness-on-Windermere, Newcastle-under-Lyme returning to Scarborough in 2007
8, 14, 20 September 7.30pm Mat 2 Sept 2.30pm
Audio-described 20 Sept
Runs 2hr 30min One interval
TICKETS: 01723 37541
www.sjt.uk.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 5 August
Intimate Exchanges plays Off-Broadway at 59E59 Theaters 31 May-1 July www.59e59.org
Marital misalliances make for comic misery.
Another Intimate Exchange, another cigarette – or not. On that momentary decision hang events, set across 4 scenes separated by 5 days, 5 weeks then 5 years. In this play, temptation’s resisted and instead of gardener Lionel Hepplewick, private-school headteacher’s wife Celia Teasdale meets family friend and Chair of the school governors Miles Coombes.
From the moment Miles paces the garden practising a speech to the school governors, words entangling each other, hands gesturing nervously or suspended indeterminate in the air, it’s clear he’s another of Ayckbourn’s diffident, decent middle-classes. In 1982 (Exchanges’ original date) he’s adrift in a new society; his company makes computer-parts so micro they’re inexplicable, if not downright invisible – yet, with the hostile turn the new techno-world increasingly has in Ayckbourn, they could have deadly force in use.
All this from a company run by mild-mannered Miles. A Cricket Match is a comedy of marital unhappiness, yet mild enough in comparison to Sylvie’s story in Fete. But it’s ingenious. A dinner-party intended for 4 characters has only 2 turn up; a fine example of Ayckbourn’s use of just 2 actors. We know the other characters can’t join them. Naturally with Ayckbourn, the reason takes the story forward.
The order anyone sees Intimate Exchanges will affect perceptions, an effect paralleled in his more recent House and Garden (which are played simultaneously in adjacent auditoria). In those plays, there’s a different focus on who the drama seems to be about, while the plays themselves are quite different in type.
Here, with Claudia Elmhirst’s Sylvie a bit-part servant running innocently around, it’s hard to see her as the tragic victim of A Garden Fete. Yet Elmhirst’s very-middle class Celia comes into sharp focus, her quick, light yet firm speech with its polite evasions and determined smiling indicating nerves tautened by a trying marriage, contrasting Miles’ loose-limbed, profusely ginger-curled Rowena, behaving independently of her unsatisfying husband.
Bill Champion’s Miles, suited, upright and nervous, is a delicious contrast to his loping, drawling Lionel, another major player in Fete who’s a bit-part character here, and pompous headteacher Toby, steadily going under the drink.
Celia Teasdale/Sylvie Bell/Rowena Coombes: Claudia Elmhirst
Miles Coombes/Toby Teasdale/Lionel Hepplewick: Bill Champion
Directors: Tim Luscombe, Alan Ayckbourn
Designer: Michael Holt
Lighting: Ben Vickers
2006-08-07 12:33:21