Alan Ayckbourn. Bedroom Farce (1975)

     Alan Ayckbourn. Bedroom Farce (1975) Just what it says: three couples shown in their bedrooms, one getting ready for an anniversary, one using it as a cloakroom, and one as a sick room. A fourth couple, whose marriage is breaking up, descend on all three couples in turn, and mess things up. In the end, nothing is resolved. Along the way, there’s some farce, but this is the England of 1975, when the hangover from the swinging 60s was beginning to set in, and there was a generally sour and disillusioned mood. This mood infects the play, which keeps slipping into darker themes than farce can well support. Ayckbourn himself noted that it was a comedy “with farcical elements.”
According to his website, Ayckbourn has had a good career as playwright and director. Odd that I’ve never heard of him. This copy of the script was lent to us by Doreen, who played Suzanne (the wife in the weak marriage) in a Toronto amateur production. It reads like a playable script, but the language is merely adequate to its purposes. This means that the direction and acting would make or break a production. Ayckbourn directed most of his own plays, and many became hits, which suggests that his real forte was directing. ** (2008)