Delia and Ernest are preparing to celebrate their anniversary. Kate and Malcolm are preparing for a house-warming party; to which Jan is going while her husband Nick, in agony with a bad back, prepares for an early night. All three preparations are swiftly banjaxed however by the arrival of Trevor, Susannah and their marital problems. As they descend on each bedroom in turn, their problems expose the cracks in the other’s marriages, leaving a trail of turmoil and destruction in their wake.
A comedy of relationships, this intelligent and ingenious play is both funny and sad as it lifts the lid on the secret stresses and strains of seemingly happy marriages.
Bedroom Farce is presented by special arrangement with Samuel French, Ltd
CAST
Ernest
Roger Newman
Delia
Hazel Salisbry
Trevor
Alastair Jack
Susannah
Tilda Stickley
Nick
Adam Roberts
Jan
Charlie Osborne
Malcolm
Damian Frendo
Kate
Nicky Ubhi
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BEDROOM FARCE by Alan Ayckbourn
Nottingham Lace Market Theatre
We often think of seventies comedy as a bit outdated but take away the obvious 70's decor and clothes from this play and the comedy is as funny today as it ever was, transcending the decades nicely.
Four couples interwoven within three bedrooms and spanning the ages of the couples and their sometimes complicated relationships with the others, we delve into what happens within the four walls of their sleeping quarters and the talk that is touching on the candid at times.
We start with Ernest and Delia (Roger Newman and Hazel Salisbury), the mature couple of the four and parents to Trevor (Alistair Jack), as they are getting ready to go out for an anniversary meal, but this night will be one that they don't forget in a long time. Both Roger and Hazel provide some wonderful comic moments and lines throughout, and the look on Ernest's face when Delia is cleaning up the pilchards on toast is a delight, as is the mother in law/ daughter in law chat about the "B-E-D" side of their relationship. Absolute classic!
Trevor is married to Susannah (Tilda Stickley). They are a couple at war in their relationship and cause absolute havoc at Malcolm and Kate's housewarming party. Susannah is the epitome of neurotic and the sort of woman you'd hate to be stuck in a lift with! Trevor is the immature counter to Susannah and also the ex of Jan (Charlie Osborne), who has left hubby Nick (Adam Roberts) in bed with a back problem. You get the feeling that Nick's problem is slightly overdone but provides some wonderful comedy moments, especially when Trevor pops back in the early hours to Nick's and Jan's to stay the night after Trevor's and Susannah's latest set to, and to fess up to what happened at the party with Jan!!
And then there are the hosts with the most, Malcolm and Kate (Damian Frendo and Nicky Ubhi). Starting off as the playful pair, playing tricks on each other but ending the night feeling a little bit unsure of their relationship. Malcolm more interested in "locking pin C" than Kate's emotional outpouring of doubts. If you don't know the play you won't understand this, but I'm not going to say any more.
Ayckbourn is a master of writing characters who we can all recognise and the script is a wonderful vision of the different age groups involved, along with their wonderful little foibles, and these eight accomplished actors bring the words and characters alive. Some wonderful comic timing from all involved.
And talking of timing, this play is also a wonderful test for the lighting designer due to the highlighting of the three bedrooms to focus the attention on. Ben Walker, Alex Caven and Allan Green have got the timing, if you'll pardon the pun, spot on. As to did the sound effects designer Darren Coxon. The "backroom" engineers are so often just as important as the actors on stage as they create pictures in the mind and expand the vision you see on stage to make you believe that there really is a bathroom off to stage left and the doorbell or phone is ringing at stage right. get the timing wrong and the magic is gone.
Friday's performance was supposed to have been the final dress rehearsal but so popular is this play that next week is completely sold out so director Graeme Jennings took the decision to open the Lace Market doors for an extra performance. Dress rehearsal? As professional as I would have seen next week during the main run.
An excellent play created by a talented group at the Lace Market, but the only way you'll now be able to see it next week, is if there are any tickets returned to the box office. Friday was a sell out and so is every day next week, and I for one am really chuffed about that, because everyone involved deserves this success.
Read the original article here.
Review: Bedroom Farce, Lace Market Theatre
Bedroom Farce isn’t quite what it says on the tin. Designer Emma Pegg has bedrooms all over the tiny stage – we get a tri-location set so there are three of them – but it isn’t a farce as traditionally understood. Doors don’t keep opening and closing and no one in particular is trying to dig himself out of a hole or keep a secret. Nobody loses his trousers, though one or two of the chaps are seen in their underpants.
The complications arise because, despite a bed count of three, there are four couples on the loose. It’s a long night after a failed party. There isn’t any sex to speak of; nor do most of them get a lot of sleep: but in this pre-mobile play – we’re back in 1975 – there are a lot of frantic phone calls back and forth between the bedrooms.
Director Graeme Jennings has assembled a fine cast of eight, including old-stagers Roger Newman (Ernest) and Hazel Salisbury (Delia), who share pilchards on toast in bed. And the play’s written in such a way that the best lines, particularly the laugh generators, are distributed very evenly among the actors. Tilda Stickley’s performance as their daughter-in-law in a failing marriage, the neurotic, fragile and self-doubting Susannah, is darkly funny.
It’s relatively flat, slow and inconsequential in the first half, and here and there lines are a shade uncertain; but after the break proceedings become well and truly alive. It being Ayckborn, the evening is awash with middle-class domestic angst, about sexual identity, and uselessness at DIY for instance.
One of the best scenes is where Malcolm (played by Damian Frendo, with a strange haircut) is trying, and failing, to assemble a flat pack coffee table using those incomprehensible instructions they supply. Partner Kate (a delightful Nicky Ubhi) looks on unflustered. Malcolm and Kate also share a playful chasing scene in their undies.
There’s a puzzling feature in this play – there is in nearly all plays involving beds. Why are the bedclothes all so skimpy and inadequate looking?
It was a packed and appreciative house on press night, but this is not one of Alan Ayckborn’s greatest plays. It’s all rather safe and non-world-shaking. And, arguably, it ends at an arbitrary point in the narrative. That said though, it’s most definitely worth a look; that is if you can get a ticket.
Read the original article here.
Bedroom Farce
Gareth Morgan was prepared for farce in the Lace Market's production of Alan Aychbourn's 1970s play, but got a lot more heart than expected.
How to fit four couples into three bedrooms does sound like the start of a Bernard Manning joke but Alan Ayckbourn's Bedroom Farce manages it very well, and on the cosy stage at the Lace Market Theatre.
It's 1975 and newly-married and moved-in Malcolm and Kate are hosting a party - although the action centres around their half-finished bedroom. It is into this room warring couple Trevor and Susannah arrive and promptly implode. The other two bedrooms are Trevor's parents Ernest and Delia, who bicker wonderfully over leaking roofs and whether they'd prefer sardines or pilchards on their toast, and Nick and Jan: Nick is incapacitated with a bad back whilst Jan, Trevor's ex has run out of sympathy and is intent of being at the party too - with or without Nick.
So far, so farcical, but Ayckbourn, the scribe of Scarborough, is a special writer who understands the medium he's flirting with, as does director Graeme Jennings, who offers a disclaimer for those hoping for Run for your Wife. Yes, people end up in bed with the wrong people, thing go missing - except Malcolm's trousers, which he finds straight away! - and there's frantic entering and exiting through the set's doors but it's more. As the play develops it becomes an affecting drama that, whilst going through the motions of farce, is more concerned with the real people underneath it.
It is knowingly theatrical and undercuts the conventions of a farce to a point that its own rule bend into absurdity - such as Malcolm's endless procession of coats, evoking Ionesco's The Chairs - and finally break through into a sort of realism. When a grief-stricken Susannah, already having mentioned she may find other women attractive, clambers onto her mother-in-law's bed any hint of bawdy laughter is gone - we've undergone a transformation as an audience as well as the play.
That said, there's plenty to laugh at. Ernest and Delia, played with great timing by Roger Newman and Hazel Salisbury, are a delight and their near constant battle of chatter, repetition and ignoring the other is brilliantly written and performed. They're worth the ticket alone. Damian Frendo's Malcolm is also a hoot when off-stage, attempting to assemble a small dressing table to very little success. There is a far more serious side too with the neurotic Susannah repeating her self-help mantras to a point of near breakdown. She repeatedly says that Trevor is violent and indeed he seems to revel in the fact that he may have 'destroyed' his ex Jan and may be doing the same to Susannah. This is no laughing matter and Tilda Stickley’s performance blends a delicate mixture of frailty and funny. Some of the opinions of the text could have stayed in 1975 too - mainly from objectionable oaf Nick, stuck in bed with his bad back, or Delia's advice on how to be a good, or more likely subservient, wife. These haven't aged well but played as a period comedy work effectively enough.
The production is beautifully designed by Emma Pegg - presenting one of the best I've seen in a non-professional theatre - who brilliantly creates the three rooms with a procesion of geometric green wallpaper to magnolia walls and upholstered blanket boxes and back again. Clever lighting and sound for the opening and closing of 'fourth wall' windows were another fun touch. It's well directed even if some of the acting felt a little slack in places, but in spite of this it was a fun and affecting watch.
Flirtation, forwardness, flares and flat pack, this 1970s comedy has certainly been lapped up by the Lace Market's audience - the whole week's run sold out before opening, with the dress rehearsal selling out too! Bedroom Farce is exactly what it doesn't say on the tin - it's a more a real life drama, eschewing the ready-made rules of farce, and it's this which makes it well worth a watch.
Read the original article here.
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