Season’s Greetings

I arrived at the theatre with the full intention of having a good time, after all, Alan Ayckbourn is the king of comedy drama, is he not? Well I’m afraid on this night he was not. But maybe that is too harsh a criticism; maybe it was the cast that failed to pull off his witty observations of domestic life? Then again the cast were well versed and seemingly well rehearsed. Even the set was good – nothing exciting but solid in design and function and it didn’t wobble.
So why was it that we, as an audience, simply didn’t find it funny? Oh, there were laughs, of course there were, but nowhere near as many as one can normally expect from an Ayckbourn.

I eventually decided that the whole thing had been sorrily miscast and at the end of the day one has to lay the blame for that with the producers and the directors. It was difficult to work out the relationships between the parts as their ages didn’t really tally. Christopher Timothy as Bernard looked much younger than his wife Phyllis but nowhere near as unfeasibly different in age as Ricky Groves as her brother Neville, who would have been far better cast as her grandson. This was taking suspension of belief way too far. And the age problem went on throughout. It left the audience confused and seriously unamused.

All that said, it was well crafted and slickly played, the cast so efficient that one had to start questioning the script. Or perhaps it was the timeless ‘modern’ setting; perhaps done in period it might have carried more weight, more poignancy. Can you see that I am trying to find reasons to excuse this production?

Ayckbourn is riding a wave of acclaim right now but last night it did feel like a case of The Emperor’s New Clothes. Despite being professional in so many ways at the end it simply failed to make the audience laugh.

Theatre Royal Brighton
28 November
Andrew Kay

Rating: