Talk about putting the ache into Ayckbourn!

THERE’S a lot to like, but much — so much! — more to lament in Alan Ayckbourn’s interminable six-hour epic which was meant to have been the jewel in the crown of the Edinburgh International Festival.

Best known for his suburban farces, 78-year-old Ayckbourn has relaunched himself as a late-onset writer of dystopian fantasy.

His new two-part story recalls Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale and is about a puritanical society 100 years hence where, following a plague, men and women have been segregated.

Heterosexual relations are banned, and citizens are governed by a Biblical tome called the Book of Certitude. The plot focuses on a boy (Jake Davies), who is a talented artist; and his little sister (Erin Doherty), who wants to write like Charlotte Bronte.

The boy’s maverick tutor (Richard Go-between: Erin Doherty Katz) introduces him to the great nudes of Western art — uh-oh — and this leads to a dangerous romance with the daughter (Weruche Opia) of a family of dope-smoking progressives. The boy’s little sister becomes their reluctant go-between.

The main problem is that the whole thing is about three hours (or one Part) too long — and raises way too many questions, which we have plenty of time to ponder.

Such as: Did the plague really happen? What’s it like in the men’s world up North? Has technology also been wiped out?

Why are we constantly being bombarded by the minutes of local council meetings?

And if (as Ayckbourn claims) this is a cautionary tale, what are we being cautioned against?

With characters narrating their experience, what could be despatched in a glance by the excellent cast is laboriously explained, like a duff novel.

Unfortunately, unlike a duff novel, you can’t skip forward. My earnest hope is that the producers are brave enough to cut 50 per cent of this work before it gets to London’s Old Vic early next year.