ME, MYSELF & I. To 7 February.
London
ME, MYSELF & I
by Alan Ayckbourn and Paul Todd
Orange Tree Theatre To 7 February 2004
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Sat 4pm & 2,8,15,22 January 2.30pm no performance 1 January
Audio-described 10,13 January
Post-show discussion: 30 January, + Thu mats
Runs 1hr 45min One interval
TICKETS: 020 8940 3633
Review: Timothy Ramsden 30 December
Pleasant appetisers served up as a meal.You'd not guess from Alan Ayckbourn's many plays that we live in an increasingly ethnically diverse society, with different sexualities. And even his most recent young characters tend to think and speak like their forebears a generation back.
But within his territory, he has a perceptive humanity - and, of course, a theatrical wizardry always serving his plays' larger purposes. This 2-acter began as 3 lunchtime shows in Scarborough. There are 3 women and 1 male performers. Yet the women play aspects of one person the public persona Me stuck between a buttoned-up, downbeat Myself and a more open and eager I.
While the one man plays two characters who might just be one, or one real and one fantasy. The reporter interviewing supposed Twickenham Mum of the Year Mary Yately crops up later as her husband. Is local hack Rodney Beech, who's so attracted to her, the desperate creation of someone on the verge of a breakdown?
At a holiday lunchtime in Scarborough, digesting one's food, a third of this might be quite appetising. For a full, if shortish, evening the whole thing's a lot to swallow. Rodney might be the kind of nervous fellow Mary'd like to meet, but her husband's unbelievable, a collation of the mannerisms mediocre Ayckbourn actors and directors resort to in place of characterisation.
And the playwright who'd recently cut into his comedy with the sombre collapse of a wife in Just Between Ourselves - took a step back into soapy sentiment with this incredible happy ending.
Paul Todd's score, its melodies hanging teasingly round a full resolution, are pleasant enough. The women play finely, Nigel Richards sings strongly and copes with his wafer-thin roles. There's one shock; the upbeat number Electric Woman', where the females go robotic as they sing about hubby's fascination with microchip technology prefigures Ayckbourn's more recent obsession with robots and androids those attractive young women (as they always are) who uncover human feelings within their electronic selves: a link between this revival and the new Ayckbourn My Sister Sadie playing simultaneously on the Yorkshire coast.
Me: Jacqui Charlesworth
Myself: Jessica Martin
I: Stephanie Putson
Rodney Beech/Bill Yately: Nigel Richards
Director: Kim Grant
Designer: Sam Dowson
Lighting: John Harris
Musical Director/Pianist: Paul Harvard
Choreographer: Kenn Oldfield
2004-01-03 01:05:07