Relatively Speaking
I have written before that critics do not take Alan Ayckbourn as seriously as they should as he is viewed as commercial and popular. Having suffered through Pinter’s No Man’s Land at this very theatre I found two hours of cleverly constructed farce a great source of entertainment and would never knock it.
Relatively Speaking is an early Ayckbourn play written in 1965 and his first West End success. He joined the The Library Theatre Scarborough as stage manager in 1957 and built a life-long association with its guiding force Stephen Joseph. The play is based on a series of deceits and misunderstandings. It starts in the bedsit of Ginny whose boyfriend Greg wants to marry her. She says she is going to see her parents though the reality the address she gives is that of her older lover, a businessman called Philip. Greg leaves for that address to seek the father ‘s consent for marriage and arrives before Ginny. Philip misunderstands Greg to be proposing to his actual wife Sheila and is astonished to learn she (Sheila) has according to Greg at least 5 lovers (speaking of Ginny), one 30 years older than her. Ginny then turns up and Philip maintains the deceit by pretending to be her father. This leads to further hilarity as he told Sheila that Ginny in his elderly spinster secretary. The success of the humour is to maintain it in the dialogue and interaction of the various relationships.
In an excellent article in the programme Al Senter argues that the barriers created by the angry young men and critic Ken Tynan between the traditional so called bourgeois theatre of Coward and Rattigan and the the new wave of writers like Osborne and Wesker are not as clear and defined as some suggested at the time. Ayckbourn is in the Coward and Rattigan camp ( Coward was a huge admirer of this ply) but as Senter argues the opening scene in a untidy bedsit is very kitchen sink Royal Court with the clear suggestion – daring for the time – that Greg and Ginny have had sex on in her single bed. There is also highlighted and contrasted the philandering of Philip of a previous generation against the sixties promiscuity of Ginny. So it’s quite a cutting edge play: the first director Nigel Patrick mindful of audience sensibilities lowered the hemline of Ginny’s dress and the action starts in the afternoon not at 7am as in the text of the play.
Over the years the play has attracted a distinguished cast. Celia Johnson and Michael Hordern appeared in the first production as Philip and Sheila with Richard Briers as Greg. The film and stage actor of immense experience, reputation and ability Robert Powell plays Philip I this production. . Obviously more corpulent that the young Jesus of Nazareth which launched his career he has the timing to deliver the lines to maximise the humour as well as the certain cunning self-interest of the philanderer. Liza Goddard does well as the cheerful wife who is not so naive as she seems. I remember Felicity Kendall being superb in the role. Antony Eden plays Greg with some subtely. He is led on by Ginny (Lindsey Campbell) who looks the part better than she acts it.
Ivan had to dash off the i360. When I heard later that passengers were stuck in it for two hours (unreported in his account) I texted him. He will be reporting on this tomorrow in his Brighton and Hove Albion feature but I gather this happened just prior to his admission the event. Various and divers characters stuck in a viewing platform is the stuff of an Ayckbourn play.
