ABSENT FRIENDS. To 25 October.
Watford.
ABSENT FRIENDS
by Alan Ayckbourn.
Palace Theatre To 25 October 2008.
Runs 2hr 5min One interval.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 25 October.
Absence makes the laughs grow louder.
This opens in the triumphant wake of the Old Vic revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s Norman Conquests. It’s an intriguing reminder that, a year after amazing with the intricately interlinked Conquests, Ayckbourn amused Scarborough’s 1974 holidaymakers with this straightforward, yet finely-designed comedy.
Colin is supposedly being comforted by friends after his fiancée’s sudden death. Yet he’s soon dispensing rather than receiving comfort. Like Norman the year before, he devastates the people around him. Unlike Norman, Colin does it not by deeds but words. His bland complacency, perfectly caught in Ian Targett’s smiling enthusiasm, gradually infuriates just about everyone.
They start treading on conversational eggshells to prevent upsetting their bereaved friend, but he ends up treading all over their suburban strains, exposing multiple marital sores as the level of resentment rises. Only Evelyn, wife to Dale Superville’s optimistic loser John, is immune. There again, not only has she never met Colin before; as Claire Lams’ sullen, laconic performance shows, gum-chewing Evelyn’s not one to show interest in anyone or anything.
Brigid Larmour’s production isn’t perfect. The glaring orange wallpaper and door-less arches of Emma Wee’s set, and the self-conscious gracious aspect of Abigail Thaw’s elegantly dressed hostess Diana push the piece towards the seventies social satire of Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party (which has its own absentee character).
Ayckbourn’s comedy is as sharp, but based in the individual more than the social being. Though these people have tense marriages and frustrations in common with Leigh’s creations, the period is not something that needs emphasis here; a casual reference to a kitchen-roll holder costing 20p makes a point in the way the seventies-signalling platform shoes Marge has just bought do not. These may be right for the period, but they seem incongruous with the cheerily helpful, domestically-minded person Sally Ann Triplett accurately portrays.
But Larmour’s production, which starts amusingly, gathers steam after Colin arrives. And, as in the Conquests, while the comedy arises from character, objects help express feelings, a jug of cream standing in for a custard-pie, and the sandwiches swept up by John indicting the sense of need beneath his bright exterior.
Evelyn: Claire Lams.
Diana: Abigail Thaw.
Marge: Sally Ann Triplett.
Paul: Jonathan Guy Lewis.
John: Dale Superville.
Colin: Ian Targett.
Director: Brigid Larmour.
Designer: Emma Wee.
Lighting: James Farncombe.
Assistant director: Holly McBride.
2008-10-27 08:45:01