LONDON – Sir Alan Ayckbourn is a playwright of infinite jest and trickiness.From his first Broadway show, “How the Other Half Loves,” through his trilogy, “The Norman Conquests,” to his last New York offering, “Communicating Doors,” Ayckbourn has consistently shown a fascination with theatrical time and space.
The “Norman” trilogy, for example, offered three plays set at the same time in various parts of the same house – with every exit from one set providing an entrance to another.
Now, in his latest two plays for London’s Royal National Theater – “House” and “Garden” – he has taken that concept of a common time in adjacent spaces a tricky step further.
The new idea is to put on two totally intermeshed plays in two different theaters in one building and have the actors breathlessly run between the two auditoria so separate audiences see different sections of the same play at different times.
Get it?
One day, if the concept catches on, we might have Olympic medals awarded to actors who can run the fastest between plays. Here, urged on by stage managers, they have to negotiate the rabbit warren of stairs and corridors linking the National’s Olivier Theater, where “Garden” is planted, to the Lyttelton Theater, which “House” calls home.
The play (or plays), with all the racing entrances and exits, is more of a racy farce than a proper comedy.
At one point, the harassed hero, a prosperous, middle-aged businessman hoping to be nominated as a Parliamentary candidate, even loses his trousers, a classic farce motif.
Still, as always with Ayckbourn, the farce has the special undertone of character and truth combined with that odd world-weary sadness that makes him more than merely a consummate prankster juggling a monkey load of tricks.
The major difficulty with this double play is that one half, “House” – in which our political hopeful, a compulsive womanizer, gets tested by his infidelities as well as the Prime Minister’s silkily smooth envoy – is markedly more interesting and funnier than the other, “Garden” – in which our characters prepare for an annual village fete.
Still, both plays are most amusingly and stylishly acted, though I doubt New York has the appropriate spaces to accommodate this peculiar double act.
I guess we will have to content ourselves this coming season with Ayckbourn’s other recent play, “Comic Potential,” due at the Manhattan Theater Club.
This at least takes up only one theater at a time.
