Alan Ayckbourn. Bedroom Farce (1977)

     Alan Ayckbourn. Bedroom Farce (1977) Two act comedy. Three couples prepare for their respective evenings: Delia and Earnest for an anniversary dinner, Malcolm and Kate for a party; while Nick stays home with a bad back, and Jan goes to the party. Delia’s son Trevor and his wife Susannah are having marital problems and interfere with all three couples. They spoil the party, interrupt people’s sleep, and finally reconcile.
     The set consists of the three bedrooms, and the action takes place over a few hours on a Saturday evening. The play is “good theatre”, that is, it affords the actors and director an opportunity to do a lot of fun stuff to make the play work. The story is simple enough, the dialogue is typically British middle class, which means very little difference between the characters’ styles of speech, and there’s also the typically British eye for the absurdity of everyday or ordinary life. The script is marked up by Doreen, she played Susannah. I’d like to have seen that. **½ (2002)