‘First Person Singular’ satirizes British class system
Playwright Alan Ayckbourn captures the absurdities of the British class system through a trio of couples on Christmas Eve. A satire on the get-rich-quick culture of 1970s England, “First Person Singular” follows the fates of three wildly incompatible pairs through their kitchens.
The Vortex Theatre will stage Ayckbourn’s comedy beginning Friday, continuing on weekends through Dec. 23. Known as a master satirist of middleclass manners, the Tony and Olivier award-winning playwright has often been compared to Nöel Coward and Harold Pinter.
Lower-class up-and-comers the Hopcrofts prattle about in their brandnew, gadget-crammed kitchen as they anxiously host a party for their bank manager and his wife and an architect neighbor. A contractor eager for both social and professional advancement, Sidney Hopcrofts is socially inept and desperate to court his betters.
Architect Geoffrey is falling from grace after a design (and its roof) fails and he careers into adultery. His wife, Eva, is depressed and drug-dependent as she flees her own party to the kitchen of her neglected, untidy flat.
The aging banker Ronald enjoys the finer things in life, balancing both indulgence and disdain for Sidney and Jane before he descends into financial ruin. His wife, Marion, is a snobby and eccentric alcoholic who rules over their
slightly modernized Victorian kitchen.
As the play progresses, the Hopcrofts climb to material prosperity as their friends plummet.
“It’s really about the class structure in England,” director Marty Epstein said.
“The people are always going to claw to the top,” he continued. “They are very focused on their own class. Even if (Sidney) makes money and his business takes off, he will never be accepted in that class.”
Epstein has been an Ayckbourn fan for years.
“The first play I ever directed was an Alan Ayckbourn play,” he said. “I love the style; I love the writing. He writes about sad people; that’s why we laugh at them.”
One character spends the entire second act trying to commit suicide. Nobody notices.
“She tries to electrocute herself on a light bulb,” Epstein said. “They think she’s just trying to change it.”
The title is meaningless, he added. Ayckbourn revived it from another, discarded play.
“He didn’t’ have any motive or desire to make some kind of a point,” Epstein said. “It just kind of dropped into his head.”
“First Person Singular” opened in Ayckbourn’s hometown of Scarborough, England, in 1972 and in London in 1973. It opened on Broadway in 1974, where it ran through 1976. It was revived on Broadway in 2005.