ADC Theatre
November 19-22
Dir. Max Barton and Joe James Pitt-Rashid; CUADC Freshers’

Five Stars

Is the comedy of Bedroom Farce farcically hilarious? Absolutely. Was this Fresher’s production farcically awful or amateur? Absolutely not. This is a show that takes risks with Alan Ayckbourn’s exploration of the farcical underbelly to suburban middle-class life, and while sometimes these risks don’t quite come off, the end result is still vibrant enough to have the audience keeling over with amusement.

From the moment you enter the theatre to find a giant-sized bed dominating the stage and the actors in the aisles posing in their dressing gowns and pyjamas as if in front of a bedroom mirror, it’s clear that this production does things a little bit differently. First on stage are Jessie Wyld as the ever-so-posh Delia and Simon Haines as Ernest, her raunchy husband who can’t quite resist keeping some porn mags under the bed. “Things might get a little bit hot this evening,” Ernest says to Delia with a suitably knowing expression on his face. It’s an appropriately farcical way to start a play in which the respectable face of British suburban living is continually undermined through a series of comic husband- and wife-swaps at a house-warming party.

Wyld and Haines have a fantastic chemistry on stage that isn’t quite matched by any of the other couples, although Alex Owen plays the overgrown schoolboy Trevor down to a tee and Chris Poel provides some hilarious moments as the bed-stricken and fatally insecure Nick (“Why me? Why me?”). Perhaps inevitably after all the laughs provided in the opening, the production does lull somewhat before coming together for a triumphant close, in which the frantic couple-swapping ends with love-ever-after (apparently). There are also elements of the stagecraft which seem just slightly too random, such as when the lighting switches between wild greens, pinks and oranges with apparently no relation to the night and daytime of the play itself. At those moments, it’s as if the sheer bizarreness of Ayckbourn’s script has simply overwhelmed the production.

For the most part, however, the interplay between the actors on stage is a delight to watch, particularly in the mixing of those characters that stay motionless in the bed while others rush round following their amorous adventures. Perhaps the best compliment I can offer these Freshers is that they manage to convey the full delicious absurdity of Ayckbourn’s farce without ever becoming farcical themselves.

Mike Kielty