Laughter in the face of mortality
Better Off Dead
As titles go, Better Off Dead is as cheerless as they come. When it heralds the latest from Sir Alan Ayckbourn, now 79, a momentary alarm bell rings. Is this – play number 82 in the vast Ayckbourn canon – sounding a valedictory note?
Not a bit of it confides Paul Robinson, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre, who reveals that Scarborough’s tireless theatrical kingpin is already onto play number 84. And there’s little hint of a swansong amid this reassuringly comic fare (directed by the author), which conducts a droll voyage round the massive ego of a prolific elderly writer who’s holed up in a Yorkshire summerhouse churning out bread-andbutter crime fiction.
Resembling, at times, a peevish garden gnome, Christopher Godwin’s lanky, bearded Algy Waterbridge might almost have “Do Not Disturb” tattooed on his forehead. He gives brusque acknowledgement to his wife – suffering dementia-like confusions. He’s insufferably peremptory with his obliging PA. And as the fictional protagonists of his latest novel, the gruff hard-bitten detective Tommy Middlebrass and DS Gemma Price, materialise amid the shrubbery outside his den it’s clear that he holds these imaginative figments far dearer than his underlings.
Ayckbourn’s work displays a recurrent interest in subordinate types learning to challenge male power and a fascination with exploring what’s real, what’s not. Those ingredients bubble away here but the tension between a rich interior life and impoverished personal relations feels underexploited – Middlebrass fights back against being killed off yet, despite a solid performance from Russell Dixon, this pivotal character never fully lives and breathes.
In the main, the evening is taken up with the death throes – or otherwise
– of Algy’s career. In an immensely enjoyable intrusion, sending his irritability soaring, the author gets interviewed – entertainingly ineptly – by an aged school acquaintance turned even more failed journalist (a lovely turn from Leigh Symonds). As a consequence of the resulting article making its way onto the obituary pages, Algy finds himself prematurely pronounced deceased. What’s the effect on his sales figures? His brash publisher (delightfully smarmy Laurence Pears) drops in to discuss the fake news fallout.
The show could do with more twists and turns, but it’s generally heartening to find Ayckbourn whipping up laughter in the face of artistic adversity, male vanity and looming mortality.