RELATIVELY SPEAKING. To 29 March.
Hornchurch.
RELATIVELY SPEAKING
by Alan Ayckbourn.
Queen’s Theatre To 29 March 2008.
Tue-Sat 8pm Mat 20, 29 March 2.30pm.
Audio-described 29 March 2.30pm.
BSL Signed 26 March.
Runs 2hr 10min One interval.
TICKETS: 01708 443333.
www.queens-theatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 18 March.
Relatively speaking, a good revival.
Written to entertain Scarborough’s mid-1960s holidaymakers spending an evening or a wet afternoon in the theatre, Alan Ayckbourn’s play takes the comic possibilities of cross-purpose conversations as far as they can go.
Ayckbourn hints at things he will develop in later plays, from adultery by pre-mobile telephone (soon to recur in How the Other Half Loves) to the strains of middle-class marriage and, more generally, the sinister within the sociable. Here, these are contained within a comic action starting in the tiny, untidy flat where Greg and girl-friend Ginny live, before expanding into company boss Philip’s large country home on a Sunday morning.
In this sunny English country garden, Ginny arrives to deter her ex-boss from his romantic pursuit of her. Behind her comes Greg, convinced he’s visiting her parents. From the sustained scene where Sheila politely invites Greg to stay for lunch, without him ever twigging this total stranger is any other than his prospective mother-in-law, Ayckbourn turns plot tricks and twists with miraculous seeming ease.
Most of this comes over in Matt Devitt’s Hornchurch revival, though it doesn’t have quite the bright sparkle of the author’s own Scarborough revival last year: partly a matter of pacing, partly of comic acting style.
The opening scene doesn’t entirely catch the puzzlement and tension which establish Greg’s innocence compared with Ginny (referred to at the very end when Sheila says how unsuited the two will be) - something that helps set up the later comedy. Then, Karen Fisher Pollard’s Ginny seems more woman than girl, blurring her relationships with both men, especially the older one.
Paul Leonard’s Philip provides a splendid repertory of comic expressions and vocalisations, with his rock-like face and dropping jaw, but the comedy’s stylised rather than natural – it would be perfect for an equivalent character in in, say, Moliere.
Yet, once in the country, Devitt’s production is always amusing, quite often very funny. Rowan Talbot has the right, curly-haired, wide-eyed youthful confidence to drive Greg’s misunderstandings, while Claire Storey ensures Sheila’s intelligence and wisdom emerge increasingly as she becomes more aware of the real situation around her.
Greg: Rowan Talbot.
Ginny: Karen Fisher-Pollard.
Philip: Paul Leonard.
Sheila: Claire Storey.
Director: Matt Devitt.
Designer: Christine Bradnum.
Lighting: Paul Stone.
2008-03-20 00:52:27