WHEN THE SAGE OF SCARBOROUGH SAW THROUGH THE SWINGING ‘SIXTIES
1969: nearly half a century ago, and this was Alan Ayckbourn’s breakthrough. Philip Breen’s direction respects the author’s taste for in-the-round production (which the Old Vic can do, since Spacey insisted on that reinvention). It achieves the famous immersion without loss (especially since Roger Allam can act expressively with his shoulderblades even if you’re sitting ten feet away behind him). It also beautifully respects both the period and the middle-age tastes of the older couple, Allam;s Frank and Dorothy Atkinson’s Fiona: there are a few bars of Sarstedt and Elvis between scenes, and a prim tea-tray and madam’s lounging pyjamas (Atkinson is the perfect ‘60s wife, her wardrobe pleasingly hilarious throughout, especially the final dirndl).
The younger pair, Bob and Teresa, have a nicely messier living-room, though of course in the clever, tricksy Ayckbourn convention both are the same space, the pairs passing one another unseen like ghosts. And the extraordinary dinner-party scene, two separate events staged simultaneously, has the tables set crosswise: so Fiona’s more decorous pass-ag hospitality runs simultaneous, alternate lines even, with the later gathering which ends in soup-flinging chaos. That all this timeshift and omnipresence is perfectly clear even to first-time audiences is almost the most remarkable thing about Sir Alan’s contrivance.
Anyway, it’s glorious. I sneaked into a matinee preview, without a press ticket, but all six players were perfectly attuned to every absurdity and farcical moment. From the opening entry of Frank, a lumbering Roger Allam in running shorts preparing to skip and knees-bend, the struggle of flawed and confused humanity is all there. Old Frank is a bit pompous, a bit of a gull, but Allam gives him decency and puzzled innocent dignity: Fiona was out till the small hours and left him to drink his surprise anniversary bottle of wine alone.
In the other living room Bob – Fiona’s adulterous paranour – is less admirable and far from innocent, enraging and belittling his wife Teresa. Rowan Polonski catches Bob’s yobbish sexiness bang-on: as the story moves complicatedly on, he evokes a genuine nastiness, the darkness only compensated for by the steel in Ayesha Antoine as his resentful homebody wife (it’s fascinating to be back in the age of non-earning tradwives: pure nostalgia). The sextet is completed – still with pin-sharp casting – by Adam Gillen as the nerdy Featherstone and a wonderfully mouselike Laura Elsworthy as his wife: innocents used as inefficient alibis by the misbehaving Fiona and Bob.
It’s a classic play, but no spoilers. Say only that it’s delivered with perfectionist energy and the streak of sad humanity behind the jokes that is a perennial mark of Ayckbourn. Gillen and Elsworthy, a shade of middleclass below Frank and Fiona and knowing it, are given little but helpless bewilderment in the first half, but each rise to glory in the second. He funs furious with a mole-wrench, as outraged nerds always might. She – Elsworthy giving poor Mary a delicate ferocity – has three remarkable moments as a mouse that suddenly, unpredictably yet inevitably, roars. Perfect. All the way to the cheese.
oldvictheatre.com. to. 19 September
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