Relatively Speaking

Published Wednesday 12 March 2008 at 16:45 by Mary Redman

Christine Bradnum’s crowded little London flat is where two young lovers Ginny and Greg are shacked up. It revolves to reveal a suburban-looking house with the regulation bored husband and wife Philip and Sheila.

Matt Devitt directs this updated, fast paced version of Ayckbourn’s 1967 comedy. Rowan Talbot as Greg and Karen Fisher-Pollard’s Ginny make a believable modern couple, whose relationship flounders when she goes off alone to visit her parents for Sunday lunch and he follows, wanting to find out what exactly is going on.

The focus switches to The Willows, Lower Pendon, where Paul Leonard’s lizard-eyed and splendidly timed Philip and Claire Storey’s dim, mimsy and smug Sheila are whiling away yet another boring day in paradise.

Ayckbourn’s delicious talent for shrewdly observed dialogue shows itself in Sheila and Greg’s polite crossed-purposes conversation.

Then it’s Philip’s turn for bemusement followed by noisy anger at Greg’s conversation, since he assumes the younger man is his wife’s lover. In fact the truth lies elsewhere. Glorious fireworks between the two actors follow as Philip’s touch paper is lit.

The set dressing, which included modern external lighting, garden furniture, a duvet and costume details, suggested the production was set in 2008. So the salary of £16 a week at sixties’ values came as a shock. But the final analysis is that Ayckbourn had his finger on the pulse on eternal quandaries such as fidelity or lack thereof. This is an entertaining production.