HENCEFORWARD. To 4 March.

Derby

HENCEFORWARD
by Alan Ayckbourn

Derby Playhouse To 4 March 2006
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat except 4 March 2.30pm
Audio Described 25 Feb 2.30pm, 1 March 7.30pm
BSL Signed 25 Feb 2.30pm, 2 March
Backchat 2 March.
Runs 2hr 45min One interval

TICKETS: 01332 363275
www.derbyplayhouse.co.uk
Review: Alan Geary: 9th February 2006

All the usual Ayckbourn themes are turned over to be laughed at, and laugh we do; but it has a very dark side.
This might be set in the future as seen from 1987, when it was premiered, or possibly the future viewed from an earlier decade. Or is it all going on in some kind of parallel universe?

An astonishing set, showing composer Jerome’s fortress-like studio-flat, is cluttered with anachronistic gadgetry. There are seventeen old-fashioned-looking television sets he uses for visual link-ups and security surveillance, all boxy and big enough to sit on - some are, indeed, commandeered as chairs - mobile phones, bigger and more cumbersome than ever they have been; high-quality frozen meals and a comically malfunctioning robot.

We’re in a north London ruled by a female gang of muggers, the Daughters of Darkness, who beat-up then issue formal fines to people stepping onto the streets, where everyone shops by remote control, social workers are absurdly intrusive and Jerome, separated from wife and daughter, has only his robot for company.

You can see why Jerome, well observed by Julian Protheroe, has lost his family. Obsessed with audio-visual gizmos and incapable of forming an ordinary relationship with a woman, he’s straining to create an electronic composition about love. Yet twice, when the real thing’s offered him on a plate, it goes unrecognised.

The joy of this production is Emma Fildes. In the first act she’s Zoë, the gauche would-be actress who turns up from an escort agency, naïve, on edge, jolly-hockey sticks, and lovely.

After the break you want Zoë to come back, but Fildes is busy turning in another brilliant performance as the robot, now adapted to be a perfect fifties housewife, straight out of a TV cake-mix advert, all flared dress and mischievous winks at the camera.

Ayckbourn’s comedy explores all his usual middle-class anxiety themes: unmanageable children, sexual identity, bedmanship, the marital state; and there’s the playing about with time. But it’s also concerned with what it takes to be human, what exactly differentiates us from machines.

Witty and mordant, Henceforward provides plenty of laughs. But at the end we’re sent out with a sinking feeling that life has the potential to be a loveless and hollow affair.

Jerome: Julian Protheroe
Nan: Sherry Baines/Emma Fildes
Zoe: Emma Fildes
Mervyn/Lupus: Tom Godwyn
Young Geain: Aimee Reeves
Corinna: Sherry Baines
Geain: Laura Kearsey

Director: Karl Wallace
Designer: Diego Pitarch
Lighting: Sinead McKenna
Sound/Composer: Kelvin Towse
Video Design: Kit Lane

2006-02-12 00:24:23