Bedroom Farce
Alan Ayckbourn
Directed by Robin Herford
The Mill at Sonning
Star rating: 4
This beautifully paced and structured play may be 50 years old but it never fails – largely, I think, because there’s a strand of tragic truth beneath the hilarity. “If s-e-x ever raises its ugly head, close your eyes before you see the rest of it” may be the funniest line in a very funny play but it also speaks sad volumes about the inhibitions and hang-ups of the past.
Traditionally, Bedroom Farce is staged behind a proscenium with three bedrooms side by side. Here, Michael Holt has placed one larger bedroom centre stage and inserted two more, obliquely into the downstage part of the Mill’s arc-shaped playing space. It’s a neat solution which works a treat.
Comic timing is, of course, the key to Bedroom Farce and Robin Herford, who has worked extensively with Alan Aykbourn ensures that all eight actors spin off each other with joyful aplomb. Every time-honoured line (”not often …”) is placed with precision. We relish every bit of miscommunication.
There is an exceptionally strong performance from Ben Porter as the troubled, earnest, humourless (autistic spectrum?) Trevor who has fallen out with his ditsy, nervy wife Susannah (Allie Croker – good), wrecked their friends’ party and always turns up when he’s not wanted. As his middle class parents trying (and failing) to help, Julia Hills and Stuart Fox get the mood perfectly.
Full marks too to Damien Matthews, whose character Nick is a fusspot with an exaggeratedly injured back which means he stays in bed throughout (except when he falls out) and has to assert himself mainly with voice. And my goodness, does one sympathise with his long suffering wife Jan (Georgia Burnell – nicely nuanced).
The whole premise of Bedroom Farce is characters turning up in other people’s bedrooms inappropriately, inspired apparently by an incident in which Aykbourn and his partner found themselves with an incongruous bedroom guest. It’s great fun in this production although we leave the theatre, knowing that none of these couples are ever going to be unequivocally happy – whatever that means – because partnership is always a compromise and usually an uneven one at that.
Ayckbourn is always good on food. Those pilchard sandwiches eaten in bed … and in this production Ben Porter manages solemnly to munch most of a Cornish pasty while insouciantly listening to other people’s tensions.
I take exception, however, to the duvets which adorn the beds of both younger couples. Surely in the mid-1970s it would have been candlewick over sheets and blankets? But, in the scheme of things, that’s a pretty minor worry. If you want a couple of hours’ gently thoughtful theatre complete with lots of laughter, this is one to catch.
