BEDROOM FARCE

Written by Alan Ayckbourn

Directed by Aarne Neeme

Canberra Repertory

Canberra Rep Theatre Feb 19 - March 7

 

Reviewed by Alanna McLean

 

Alan Ayckbourn’s Bedroom Farce is old now, having all the marks of the 1970s about it as the older generation wrestle with hippies and the new age ideas of the young and everyone wrestles with old fashioned fixed phones. But in the expertly sensitive hands of director Aarne Neeme and a strong cast it still has quite a bit to say about marriage and relationships.

There’s three bedrooms onstage and the action swaps backwards and forwards among them. Firstly, there’s older couple, Delia (Sally Rynveld) and Ernest (Pat Gallagher), set in their ways, observing little domestic rituals, the parents of Trevor (James Grudnoff), an awfully immature hippy of a son who is paired with the very highly strung Susannah (Lara Connolly).

Malcolm (Lachlan Abrahams) and Kate (Antonia Kitzel) are a younger and more good-humoured pair but Malcolm’s doggedly unsuccessful approach to furniture building may be the big upset.

And the patience of Jan (Azerie Cromhout) is tensely coping with a bed bound Nick (Rob de Fries) because of his injured back. That’s a nice device for an actor and de Fries takes full advantage of the opportunities for comedy.

There are only three bedrooms on stage but four couples and it is Trevor and Susannah who provide much of the action in their self-absorbed wanderings between the three. These two take over each bedroom with their problems regardless of any sense of tact.

It’s a play that calls for (and receives) skilled teamwork as the action switches back and forth between those bedrooms, subtly differentiated by Andrew Kay’s straightforward set.

Ayckbourn’s plays are deceptive in that they seem on the surface to be just domestic comedy, but they always contain a character or two who is so disturbingly insensitive that you could shake them. Here it would be Trevor and Susannah, always invading others’ space, never noticing the effect they have on others.

Funny but with an edge of bleakness, this production is a reminder of the niggling power of a playwright who knows what he is doing.

A good night out with Ayckbourn and Canberra Rep and Aarne Neeme.

 

 

NEVER CLOSER

Written by Grace Chapple

Directed by Lachlan Houen.

Off the Ledge Theatre

Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre. February 19-28.

 

Reviewed by Alanna McLean

 

Never Closer is a tightly written play set in Ireland.  At the beginning the Troubles are in full swing but the young Catholic characters are also concentrating on living life. Life moves on and they reunite but now one is partnered with an Englishman and tensions and violence arise. There’s an ending of sorts some years later that involves migration and return.

There’s strong playing all round, with Emily O’Mahoney setting the pace as the fierce Deirdre who stays in the family home while others move away.  Breanna Kelly as Mary is properly forthright as the young woman who calls a spade a spade. Natasha Lyall has a lovely knowing dignity as the one who comes back with an English partner. This is the wonderfully out of his cultural depth Harry who is deftly caught by Pippin Carroll. 

Joel Hrbek’s playing of the perceptive Jimmy is an insightful contrast to Conor (a disturbing portrayal by Nick Bisa), a young man who seems to have absorbed all of the devastating local history with an eye to continuing it.

Set and lighting have some good atmospheric moments and there’s a poetic transformation done by the cast late in the piece which makes one wonder why an earlier set dressing change is not done in the same way.

The ending feels oddly underdeveloped but there’s a power in the people and a great feeling for dialogue. There’s real strength in the interaction between the characters and the use of the history. And the playing is of a very high order. It was well worth a visit to the Courtyard to see this cast at work on what is a powerful recent piece of Australian writing.