Absurd Person Singular
★★★★✩
BEFORE the start of some old films shown on TV a warning is flashed up that the film, made in a previous era, may contain ‘attitudes and language which may offend some viewers.’ Someone could well have come onstage before this well-oiled production to give a similar warning.
Written in 1972 by Alan Ayckbourn, we follow the fortunes of three couples, including a deceptively shrewd but educationally poorly equipped thrusting young businessman, a pompous self-contented bank manager, and a talented, but dilatory architect.
We meet them first in the kitchen of Sidney and Jane Hopcroft’s cheap semi-detached, where the couple are anxiously awaiting the arrival of bank manager Ronald BrewsterWright and condescending wife Marion, and architect Geoffrey Jackson and neurotic wife Eva, whom the Hopcrofts hope to impress.
Brilliantly observed by Alan Ayckbourn, very little goes to plan, except in the blinkered eyes of Sidney
Hopcroft. Jane finds herself locked outside in the rain and we discover that the other four’s smooth, successful appearance is a flimsy facade. We also see loud and clear that the three men have a chauvinist attitude towards their wives that would not be acceptable in the 21st century. It is hard to believe such attitudes were common even in the 1970s, but with his knack of mixing bittersweet comedy with serious drama, Ayckbourn shows how damaging this chauvinist attitude can be and in turn how resilient the ladies could be.
The second scene, in the Jacksons’ kitchen, where the rest appear oblivious to the fact that Eva is continually attempting suicide, is staged with great flair by director Michael Cabot, showing the company’s teamwork at its best. Without saying a word, until she joins in the chorus of the Twelve Days of Christmas which ends the scene, Helen Keeley conveys Eva’s pain while setting up some hilarious moments.
The third scene in the Brewster
Wrights,’ set like the others on Christmas Eve, which finds all the positions reversed – the Hopcrofts are now top dogs, the other two struggling with personal or professional problems – should end the play on a high farcical comedy note, but it never really burst into life.
We may still be a long way from sexual equality, but if this masterly written play tells us anything, it is that we have come an awfully long way since the 1970s.