ABSENT FRIENDS. To 14 September.
Southwold
ABSENT FRIENDS
by Alan Ayckbourn
St Edmund's Hall To 14 September 2002
Mon-Sat 8.15pm Mat Sat 5pm
Runs 2hr 10min One interval
TICKETS 01502 724441 (Mon-Fri 11am-4pm;Sat 11am-1pm)
01502 722389 (Mon-Fri 5-9.30pm;Sat 2-9.30pm)
Review Timothy Ramsden 2 September
A revival that avoids several pitfalls without scaling many heights.Come the interval, there's a smiling fellow centre stage. He's Colin, recently bereaved when his fiancee drowned. Around him are five supposedly happily-married people; all, by now, miserable. Partly that's cheery Colin's fault. But the cracks he's opened were already fissures in their self-assurance and married relationships.
Director Christopher Dunham and his cast avoid the plague of rep Ayckbourn: the replacement of character by characteristics, of personality by mannerisms. All those jingling coins in pockets accompanying worried or would-be shrewd frowns, the unnecessary sliding vocal tones and pitch – the externals covering hollowness of understanding – they're all gone. OK, there's some coin-jingling from Matthew Storey's doleful John, but it's a justifiable action from someone miserable in his marriage and hopefully dependent on Michael Shaw's explosive Paul for business. Not to mention his emotional distaste for talk of death, a subject that, unsurprisingly, keeps cropping up.
Unfortunately, a lot of comedy's drained from the production too. It feels as if it ought to be funny; sometimes it is quite amusing. But the stream of humour merely trickles. In one case, this is enlightening. Rebekah Janes reveals her character's misery beneath the social smile. Her Diana, sure husband Paul's been seeing taciturn Evelyn (Laura Hayes looking every bit the person for whom chewing gum's a physical substitute for having a thought, though sounding rather more considered in sentences of five words or over) develops a neat comic approach at the start.
She's trying to winkle the truth from Evelyn – from whom it's impossible to winkle anything – while staying within the bounds of the suburban pseudo-gentility shouted from the walls of Maurice Rubens spot-on ghastly/trendy set (this play could be played in rep with Abigail's Party: both share a significant offstage character; both analyse the heart of a drifting decade).
By the end Diana's reduced to depressive silence – a thrilling pre-vision of the miseries of family relationships in Ayckbourn's Just Between Ourselves. Elsewhere, Dunham's production would benefit from richer characterisation: Bates' Colin, for example, could be more forceful if he relied less completely on a bland smile and limited vocal modulation.
Diana: Rebekah Janes
Evelyn: Laura Hayes
Marge: Nicola Delaney
Paul: Michael Shaw
John: Matthew Storey
Colin: Gary Bates
Director: Christopher Dunham
Designer: Maurice Rubens
Lighting: Jim Laws
Costume: Richard Handscombe
2002-09-11 07:34:22