Ayckbourn’s latest takes his tally to 87 not out
Family Album (Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough)
Verdict: Classic, but sketchy, Ayckbourn ★★★II
ALAN AYCkBourN’S 87th play — yes, 87th — is like snapshots, or perhaps an oldfashioned slide show, of suburbia over the past 70 years.
We start in Wimbledon, in 1952, as sunny housewife peggy moves into her first house with John, her ex- rAF, jolly chauvinist husband. Their story is interwoven with that of their daughter Sandy, hosting a chaotic children’s birthday party 40 years later.
And 30 years after that, we meet their lesbian grandchild, who is clearing out the family home.
The lovely thing about Ayckbourn’s writing is that he takes people as he finds them, without trying to improve them. He also grounds his stories in domestic detail that remains both charming and engaging, such as peggy
and John’s domestic squabble over where to put the furniture when they first move in.
Even so, covering 70 years in just two acts — and 90 minutes (excluding the 20-minute interval) — means Family Album was always going to be sketchy. And so it proves, with a clutch of characters who need more time and space. John may be the stiff-upper-lip villain of the piece, but Antony Eden finds a great deal of affection for the affably authoritarian grandfather; while Georgia Burnell is all plucky resilience as his peacemaking wife peggy.
There’s an amusing turn from Frances Marshall as their daughter Sandra, cursing imaginatively while trying to hold it together in a 1990s children’s party after her husband goes AWoL.
Elizabeth Boag, as Sandra’s lesbian daughter Alison, recalls her mother as a tragic victim of institutional sexism, and does little more than tie up loose ends. But through her, Ayckbourn does suggest that men are architects of their own emotional and domestic obsolescence.
Much of the fun lies in the dexterity of the 83-year- old playwright, overlapping all the three narratives on a set which is simply a floorplan of a front room.
More importantly, there is a poignancy in the way each generation misjudges the last.
It may not be Ayckbourn’s finest hour, but it’s definitely not his worst.