JUST BETWEEN OURSELVES.

Tour

JUST BETWEEN OURSELVES
by Alan Ayckbourn

Runs 2hr One interval.

Review Emma Dunford 16 July 2002 at Richmond Theatre

A dark social comedy – definitely dark but decidedly unfunny. In Just Between Ourselves Ayckbourn’s humour cannot be described as timeless.It is always difficult to get enthralled by a play if the only enthusiasm you can establish involves an insipid longing for the play’s finale. It then becomes even more agonising when the play’s finale fails to subdue this same banal enthusiasm. In Alan Ayckbourn’s Just Between Ourselves mutters of, ‘is that it?’ echo around the auditorium as the audience makes to leave their seats.

This is no criticism of the cast's acting abilities; they portray their stereotypes convincingly. The problem lies elsewhere - with the triviality of the play’s content. When theatre allows its audience to become involved in the trivialities of the lives of its characters, it should also allow you to care about what happens to them. But this is not to be in Ayckbourn’s dark social comedy. It doesn’t allow us to care but keeps us behind a wall at a distance; an adverse effect making the play listless and the audience apathetic. The trivialities remain trivial.

Two couples – a domineering husband and subservient wife, suffering from a breakdown, and a domineering wife and impotent husband, suffering from his own insubstantiality. Dennis (suitably portrayed by Les Dennis) is a ‘take-the-mick’ husband devoid of feeling, caring more for his infuriating mother (Jean Boht) and his failing attempts at DIY in the garage than for his meek and long suffering wife Vera. Pam is an unfulfilled and discontented woman struggling with the composite of age, a useless husband and the relief that alcohol may bring. There is no plot. What you see is literally what you get.

Moving to a darker place than that seen in Ayckbourn’s earlier work, the playwright handles subjects such as feminism and depression with a severe rawness that is often disturbing. It is a mark of the times that the play’s substance, which may have procured a laugh in its day, doesn’t do so with the same consequence now. Nervous breakdowns are no longer funny in today’s climate and only when they can be evoked tongue-in-cheek can they acquire a tittle of nervous laughter.

In the 1970s Ayckbourn’s humour was dark. Now, I’m afraid, it remains dark but altogether humourless. His evocation may be true to life, but is it a life we really want to see?

2002-07-23 17:04:30