The Stage

Alphabetical Order

Published Thursday 23 April 2009 at 11:35 by Jeremy Austin

“A lot of what I have written,” says Michael Frayn in the programme for this production of his play Alphabetical Order, “is about how people try to make sense of the world.”

In a struggling newspaper office in the struggling early seventies, Frayn’s carefully drawn and boldly realised cast of characters struggle to make sense of their world - the increasingly futile existence of a bunch of ageing hacks and the chaotic newspaper library where they spend most of their time.

For a new librarian, the OCD Lesley, sense comes through order. For the rest of the motley crew, it comes through laughing in the face of adversity and in increasingly desperate attempts to find comfort in the bosom (or beds) of their fellow workers.

That’s pretty much it. Alphabetical Order is a series of character sketches that at one time were in search of a precinct. Presumably, these are people Frayn knew as a young reporter on the Manchester Guardian in the sixties. And presumably they are as well drawn as they appear to be.

“Nothing means what it appears to mean,” says laconic hack John, and that is pretty much it, too, when it comes to the device Frayn opts for when his character’s communicate. Everything here is hidden. Everything is kept below surface. The chaos in the office is allowed to continue, while the chaos and insecurity everyone is feeling in their lives is kept out of sight. It’s fitting that it should return to the theatre in which it was born 35 years ago in these uncertain times, when we are all ‘keeping calm and carrying on’.

This is a character-driven piece and the young Frayn even then had the skill as an observer of human nature and of the nuances of dialogue to carry the audience. That it hasn’t dated is testament to his skill.

Of course, this is aided by the performances and Luscombe’s direction - which allows the action (such as it is) to ebb and flow in time with the deftly woven rhythms of Frayn’s script.

The eternally young Imogen Stubbs allows her character’s frailties to break through the ever-cheerful exterior with care, and it is her performance which drives the piece. The others keep their pain hidden and yet allude to it.

Ian Talbot as Geoffrey, the cheerful delivery man, lays that cheerfulness on eggshells, while both Gawn Grainger and Michael Garner as Arthur and Wally, two gnarled hacks, manage to convey the broken people that still hurt beneath the leathery masks they have been wearing for years.

Only new girl Lesley, played sternly by Chloe Newsome, is as cold and methodical on the inside as she is on the outside - and, perversely, is therefore the most honest.

Newsome’s portrayal of Lesley as some proto-Thatcher rising to the top in this collapsing old world is remarkably prescient of what was to come.

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