EVENTS ON A HOTEL TERRACE. To 1 May 2007.

Scarborough/Bowness-on-Windermere/Newcastle-under-Lyme

EVENTS ON A HOTEL TERRACE
(Intimate Exchanges)
by Alan Ayckbourn

The Old Laundry Theatre Bowness-on-Windermere
27-29 September; 12 October 8pm
then New Vic Theatre Newcastle-under-Lyme
17-19; 28 October, 2 November 2006 7.30pm
returning to Stephen Joseph Theatre Scarborough in 2007
Runs 2hr 20min One interval

TICKETS: 015394 88444 ext 223 (Bowness-on-Windermere)
01782 717962
www.newvictheatre.org.uk (Newcastle-under-Lyme)
01723 370541
www.sjt.uk.com (Scarborough)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 23 September at Stephen Joseph Theatre Scarborough

Intimate Exchanges plays Off-Broadway at 59E59 Theaters 31 May-1 July www.59e59.org

Unhappy marriage works a treat in this fine Intimate Exchange.
Should she or shouldn’t she? Headteacher’s wife Celia Teasdale decides, one ordinary morning, while doing the spring-cleaning in June, to have a cigarette or not. So she either responds to caretaker Lionel Hepplewick’s ring at the doorbell (as here) or doesn’t. The seemingly-trivial decision alters the courses of several lives in this middle-England garden where all is not lovely, creating 2 possibilities, each fragmenting into 2 more as scenes proceed.

Each of the 8 (16 counting variant short finales) Intimate Exchanges leads unhappily-married Celia, disgruntled, demotivated husband Toby, their cleaner Sylvie Bell and Lionel down varying paths, with different emphases on these characters plus Toby’s friend and Chair of Governors Miles Coombes and wayward wife Rowena.

The various Exchanges’ titles come from their third scenes. Here, following a second scene where Toby’s jeremiad against modern life is a comic set-piece triumph for Bill Champion, the Teasdales take a week’s holiday to help Toby’s apparent heart problem. It leads to a splendid tableau as the lights go up on the pair seated alone on a hotel terrace, their body-language summarising the holiday in a moment.

From this develops one of the sequence’s less likely events. Lionel who, throughout, mixes stolid simplicity with malevolent conniving, moves from the opening scene’s innuendo to devotion towards Celia, taking a job as waiter at this hotel (it’s among the unlikeliest scenarios in the octet), creating opportunities to speak with her alone by providing multiple afternoon teas.

Though Celia is the most difficult character for Claudia Elmhirst, who needs to approach her with an ‘actorly’ voice owing to the age-difference while wearing clothes fashioned for older tastes, she works splendidly in the unreal terrace farce, fending off husband and would-be lover alike, stuffing her handbag with food, downing tea like a one-woman vicarage social.

Champion, expansive in Lionel’s easygoing lack of awareness, hunched and scrunched as the alcoholic Toby, is splendid, with an indignation that makes the man’s various complaints about modern life almost sympathetic, his sarcasms hilarious. It’s a classic case of comedy making someone who'd be utterly unbearable in life a theatrical delight.

Celia/Sylvie: Claudia Elmhirst
Miles/Toby/Lionel: Bill Champion

Directors: Tim Luscombe, Alan Ayckbourn
Designer: Michael Holt
Lighting: Ben Vickers

2006-09-24 13:06:04