MY SISTER SADIE. To 3 January.
Scarborough
MY SISTER SADIE
by Alan Ayckbourn
Stephen Joseph Theatre To 3 January 2004
Mon-Sat 7pm Mat Sat & 31 December, 2 January 2.30pm no eve performance 31 December. No performance 1 January
Audio-described 3 January 2.30pm
BSL Signed 2 January 7pm
Runs 1hr 55min One interval
TICKETS: 01723 370541
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 December
Good-hearted comic adventure in familiar style beats most mainstream stage and screen offerings at Christmas.It only happened once, but before the performance of Sadie there was an announcement that there would be an anouncement. And there was, as a young man leapt on to the stage and proposed to his girlfriend. We must wish them well (she accepted). But there has to be an irony in proposeing on the boards that have hosted so many Ayckbournian dissections of muddled and miserable marital purgatories.
This play has its own muddle: it's set on Muddle Farm. The owners, the Picketts, have gaps in their family - dad left a long time before and Luke's big sister was killed 7 years ago. So he's delighted when a new sister walks in, all dirty from a helicopter accident.
It takes much of Alan Ayckbourn's skill to disguise the improbability his plot builds into this situation; this woman must seem to be a brilliant computer scientist, but also look young enough to join a cosy household as a junior member.
There's more to her though - as there is to her name, Sadie - strangely, tattoed on her. She carries a menace (which the play develops only a certain way), leading to a Blade Runnerish cliffhanger.
She carries on Ayckbourn's obsession with the way androids, robots and their like test the meaning of humanity. True, the metallic programmed creations who acquire human feelings tend always to be attractive young women in his plays. At least he's drawn on the cool style of Saskia Butler rather than the more fizzing emotionality of other regular young female performers at Scarborough, like Alison Pargeter or Janie Dee.
And he builds some finely comic scenes while maintaining enough story tension to hold most attentions. There's a fine display of simmering jealousy directed at the new woman potentially in Luke's life from Charlie Hayes as the young man's girlfriend. While, despite the well-focused likeable quality Neil Grainger brings to Luke, his male assurance isn't above taking a slip or two from Sadie.
All well within the Ayckbourn field of vision, of course. And if this weren't a family show produced at Christmas, it might matter more that he draws on the old-fashioned elements in this comedy-thriller - elements from an age when comedy and thriller couldcosily co-exist. The two army men, jolly assured officer and merry NCO, might have turned up 50 years ago in a farce like Reluctant Heroes while Alexandra Mathie's humourless scientist is straight out of B-movie cliche from the same age - one or two arguments in her favour could have strengthened the Promethan conflict in the play withoutb weighing it down.
Never mind, there's plenty of old-style stuff around, some under new cover - and this is more genuinely felt and skilfully put together than most of the competition.
Luke Pickett: Neil Grainger
Avril Pickett: Becky Hindley
Captain Leonard Lennox: Jusin Brett
Sergeant Jipton: Adrian McLoughlin
Sadie: Saskia Butler
Dr Thora Grayling: Alexandra Mathie
Lisa: Charlie Hayes
Director: Alan Ayckbourn
Designer: Pip Leckenby
Lighting: Kath Geraghty
Music: John Pattison
Costume: Christine Wall
2003-12-21 18:27:00