ABSENT FRIENDS. To 18 April.

London

ABSENT FRIENDS
by Alan Ayckbourn

Greenwich Playhouse To 18 April 2004
Tue-Sat 7.45pm Sun 4pm
Runs 2hr One interval

TICKETS: 020 8858 9256
boxoffice@galleontheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 28 March

Over-deliberate playing style doesn't do well by Ayckbourn.This was the piece that, mid-seventies, had critics talking about Ayckbourn's comedies growing darker though compared with more recent work this is just slightly off-white. Three married (yes, married) couples hold a mini-bereavement party for Colin, whom most of them merely remember slightly. The joke is, he turns up complacently consoled and sticking fingers into the mini-bereavements of their marriages.

The humour's stirred by character friction. Hostess Diana, who tries to keep the party going but by the end is the only one not around, is married to unloved, unloving Paul, trying to gain admission of his supposed affair with taciturn, gum-chewing Evelyn. Her husband John's eternally trying, eternally unsuccessful, while Marge's preoccupied with absent Gordon, at home with yet another illness and a burst hot-water bottle. Life, and what goes for love, are not unlike a burst hot-water bottle in this play.

In this space, close-up to the few rows of seating (note, this is Greenwich Playhouse, a pub theatre situated by the forecourt of Greenwich railway station, not the larger, nearby, Greenwich Theatre), there's no room for the twitching mannerisms of bad rep. Ayckbourn playing. And Galleon Theatre Company's cast is happily free of that.

Less happily, they also point things up as if communicating across larger spaces and even in a larger space, the deliberate point-making could seem overdone. Ayckbourn of this period works through disruptions and puncturings of the everyday, not the farce-like style usually adopted here. It's perhaps why Carole Carpenter's Evelyn in black with ferocious red lipstick and miniskirt the outsider amidst the pastel-respectability of Diana's house and neck-wear comes over well. Though even here the taciturnity and telling facial reactions where other characters would speak and justify, lacks the smouldering impatience the character can have.

Likewise, Kevin Marchant's Colin, though his facile misreadings of all around are over-pointed at times. And Adam Robert Brody's fidgety, gestural manner, though over-repeated, can make a comic point.

Generally, though, less would be more; less shrillness, less mugging, less obvious signing of emotions. It's all in the right thematic direction, but it's all theatrically too much.

Diana: Karen Admiraal
Evelyn: Carole Carpenter
Marge: Fiona Terry
Paul: Paul Hessey
John: Adam Robert Brody
Colin: Kevin Marchant

Director: Bruce Jamieson
Designer: Liam Daniel Shea
Lighting: Robert Gooch
Costume: Rachel Baynton

2004-03-29 08:19:57