Absent Friends

Published Thursday 9 October 2008 at 15:45 by John Thaxter

Back in 1974, Ayckbourn chanced his arm with this thin Chekhovian comedy in which nothing much happens except a group of unhappy friends sitting around talking about their problems. He was also making fun of our reluctance to face up to death, which rings false at a time when people rush forward to console the bereaved.

Here we have Colin whose beloved fiancee has accidentally drowned, while old friends Di and Marge are hosting a tense tea party to cheer him up. But the unmentionable death becomes both an elephant in the room and the chief joke of the evening.

As it turns out, the beaming Colin, played by Ian Targett, takes a rosily romantic view of his misfortune, hands round favourite snaps of the lost loved one and tells his chums how lucky they are to have made good marriages.

This acts as a catalyst for a series of loosely comic set-pieces in which Di, played by Abigail Thaw, anoints her erring husband Paul with the contents of the cream jug before going into a screaming fit, while a long-suffering John faces up to his role as a cuckold to Paul’s sneaky sex drive.

Happily, Ayckbourn also wrote a brilliant cameo role for Marge, a childless wife whose husband is a perpetual invalid, always on the phone from his sick bed. This gives Sally Ann Triplett the opportunity to create a character of quiet tragedy, tenderness and depth - much of it in her playing rather than the writing - and one which for me transformed a disappointing evening into one of those nights to remember.