Review: Absurd Person Singular

Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough

In 1972 Alan Ayckbourn changed up a gear.

Already a successful playwright with a deft and impressive hand when it came to writing farce, with this dark piece he showed that there was more than just a few laughs and pratfalls to his work. Here was a serious playwright with some serious things to say – and not all of them light and froth.

Absurd Person Singular is the play in which Ayckbourn revealed his dark side.

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How dark? There’s a hilarious act – a whole act – involving one of his lead characters attempting to commit suicide in her kitchen while her guests clean up and prattle on around her.

This production, the 40th anniversary production of the premiere show, also in Scarborough, went on to be the most commercially successful of all Ayckbourn’s plays.

The play tells the story of three couples who come together over three Christmas Eves, ostensibly to share some festive spirit, in actuality to allow Ayckbourn to explore the social mores of the various tribes that make up the various classes of Britain.

Those more used to a lighter shade of Ayckbourn with a dark side on the side, will be a little shocked to see it take centre stage here.

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What doesn’t surprise is the quality of the cast. Ayesha Antoine as the woman unable to deal with her depression and attempting to end it all is absolutely magnetic, as she was when playing a 12-year-old in My Wonderful Day (for which she deservedly won awards).

As social climber Sidney, Ben Porter is a slimy piece of work and Laura Doddington has a quiet desperation behind her eyes as she succumbs to her OCD, relentlessly cleaning the new kitchen. Sarah Parks is impressive as the kept, drunk wife of a rich banker.

The only cause for concern is that, written as it was in the unenlightened early 1970s, are the laughs at some of the misogyny ironic? One hopes so – and would urge that fact to be made more clear to the audience.