THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE. To 24 April.

Harrogate

THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE
by Alan Ayckbourn

Harrogate Theatre To 24 April 2004
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat 17 April 2.30pm
Captioned: 16 April
Post-show talk 22 April
Runs 2hr 40min One interval

TICKETS: 01423 502116
www.harrogatetheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 6 April

As fine a revival as you can hope to find, balancing serious and hilarious elements perfectly.This is a rich piece of character observation within Ayckbourn's southern middle-class social world (he's more likely to write in androids than northerners, despite his Scarborough base). And Harrogate's revival is at least as good as the author's premiere production, or a Northampton revival by David Grindley, an ace director in such work.

Things is rare in Ayckbourn's work as not written for staging in-the-round. Contrasting his earlier Taking Steps, which played 3 storeys on one level, this shows the top of basement level, full height ground-floor, and knee height upstairs.

Janet Bird's spacious 3-decker London house places successful career-woman Barbara - through the window panels are glimpsed similar elegant Regency properties. Educated at St Gertrude's, a private girls' school, Barbara currently lets out her basement to Gilbert, a postman whose dogged admiration leaves her in charge. It's when younger schoolfriend Nikki rents upstairs from the former Senior Prefect known round St Gert's as Spike that control starts slipping.

Nikki's still in awe of Babs; as a natural victim she's about to remarry. For Barbara life's rule is Live alone or compromise; the nearest she comes to admiring a man is her boss, safely detached from private life. Her dislike of Nikki's fiancée begins before they meet, hearing he calls his intended a porcelain princess'.

Between scenes, Paul Sheard's lighting turns each room a different, lurid colour compartmentalising the place and symbolising the violent disturbance as lover Hamish deserts Nikki (early on they'd been loving enough to make turtle doves seem dispassionate) in a sexual compulsion drawing him and Babs together - leaving the natural victim sitting alone half-seen upstairs, engaged with ripping yarns - of her former fiancee's clothing. But the others don't escape, as the later frozen moments of bemused wonderment make clear.

The women's relationship is crucial; significantly both Janine Wood and Cate Debenham-Taylor have worked at Sam Walters' Richmond wonder-house, the intimate in-the-round Orange Tree Theatre, where truthful, stylish playing is the rule. But as everyone's world falls apart amid a comic miasma of injury, demolition and indignity, everyone in this immaculate production contributes to the perfectly balanced mix of comedy and tragedy.

Gilbert: Rod Arthur
Barbara: Janine Wood
Nikki: Cate Debenham-Taylor
Hamish: Robin Cameron

Director: Christopher Luscombe
Designer: Janet Bird
Lighting: Paul Sheard
Fight director: Kevin McCurdy
Assistant director: Phil Lowe

2004-04-10 00:17:52