SEASON'S GREETINGS till 31 October
Keswick
SEASON'S GREETINGS
by Alan Ayckbourn
Theatre By The Lake In rep to 31 October 2003
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Wed & 4 October 2pm
Audio-described 4 October 8pm
BSL Signed 10 October
Runs 2hr 35min One interval
TICKETS: 017687 74411
Review: Timothy Ramsden 7 August
Finely-judged revival catches hilarity and agony of a family at Christmas.
Keswick's summer season has hit the jackpot with Ian Forrest's finely-drawn revival of Ayckbourn's family Christmas comedy. It's rare for any Ayckbourn revival not directed by the man himself to be this truthful and wide-ranging in tone.
From Christmas Eve till the early grey hours of December 27 a collection of strangers who happen to be linked by birth, marriage or in one case hope, are gathered under one roof, bound (in two senses) to rub each other up the way. It's a cauldron of personalities in which each person's weakness, and sense of personal failure boils to the surface, done to a turn more surely than any of the inadequate foodstuffs prepared by Phyllis, 39 and unhappily married, or Rachel, 38 and miserably single.
Kate Layden's Phyllis hides behind a flurry of inedible offstage cooking and onstage drinking, while Jessica Lloyd shows Rachel as a bundle of self-protective fears irresistibly leaking lack of self-certainty in snappy phrasing and brusque movements.
Sympathies are not so much divided between Harvey Miller's retired security man and Roger Delves-Broughton's doctor, as falling between them. Incompetent Bernard, a doctor for whom life and death is a matter beyond his diagnosis, comes hilariously into focus with the puppet-show that's clearly the climactic annual bore for everyone around.
And Harry's weapon-clad anger long remains unthreatening, even as he suffers Bernard's hapless puppet-rehearsal, rolling around in an agonised boredom climaxing in desperate destruction - eventually seen as a route to his violent core.
Tolstoy-like, each married couple's miserable in their own way. The men get on best when not thinking about it. Inept Eddie threatens pregnant Pattie they're the least developed pair while David Tarkenter's Neville is clearly happier with mechanical toys that can be sorted with a screwdriver than with Belinda's emotional needs. Tarkenter keeps Neville's fury in reserve, letting it shoots out forcefully when needed.
Dennis Herdman's visiting one-novel writer is a suitably wide-eyed catalyst, a descendent of the Conquest trilogy's Norman. Herdman makes comically clear the selfishness beneath the surface, with a sex scene going wrong that's another of the evening's hilarious high-points.
Pattie: Alison Darling
Bernard: Roger Delves-Broughton
Clive: Dennis Herdman
Phyllis: Kate Layden
Rachel: Jessica Lloyd
Harvey: Harry Miller
Belinda: Corinna Powlesland
Neville: David Tarkenter
Eddie: Adam Waddington
Director: Ian Forrest
Designer: Martin Johns
Lighting: Nick Beadle
Sound: Paul Bunn
2003-08-10 15:47:03