There was a time, of not too distant memory, when Alan Ayckbourn had a standing similar to bitcoin. The doyen of domestic detail was bankable and apparently bullet proof. The never-ending swirl of class generated eddies in the social fabric were, and are, the subject of his and our constant fascination, not to say irritation. Ayckbourn in the sixties and subsequently through to the eighties and beyond seemed to have his finger on the pulse of something – maybe the death rattle of a vanishing mode of being. Pre-internet does seem like a different epoch viewed from the present.

Attitudes that were becoming humorously outdated at the time of writing now come across as decidedly toe curling. Absurd Person Singular, which is in effect the stitching together of three one act plays, linked by differing levels and textures of marital disharmony, is just close enough in time and attitudes to qualify as uncomfortable rather than safely distant. So whilst it may be slightly premature to put Absurd Person Singular on the shelf marked, ‘classic’, a revival admits of a backward glance at our embarrassingly recent selves.  Never excoriating, rather employing the playful swish of a riding crop, an Ayckbourn play was and remains something you went to in expectation of a comfortably distorting, ‘mirror up to nature’. 

The trope of the socially inept ladder climber who is looked down upon as de trop, often with good reason, but who eventually triumphs through sheer determination is the tenuous thread that runs through the three acts which take place on alternate Christmases. Each act plays out a Christmas drinks party hosted by one of the three couples. The first is hosted by the socially OCD, Sydney Hopcroft (Paul Sandys), a small trader with big ambitions, and his equally socially tense wife, Jane (Felicity Houlbrooke). Whilst Jane succumbs to near hysteria in the face of a socially challenging situation, where imminent solecism lurks ready to pounce and destroy any semblance of decorum, Sydney is too ready to blame his wife for the failure to impress.

Act two finds the emotionally traumatized and numbed, Eva Jackson (Helen Keeley) whose male chauvinist pig of a husband, Geoffrey Jackson (John Dorney) is oblivious to the damage he has done in announcing his affair with another, unseen, woman. His total self-absorption and lack of awareness of his wife is summed up when he says with genuine feeling, ‘Try and see my side.’

The final act sees the decline through alcoholism of the outrageously stuck-up and condescending, Marion Brewster-Wright, played with relish by Rosanna Miles. The implication being that she is driven to drink by the emotional vacuum that is her bank manager husband, Ronald (Graham O’Mara).

Director, Michael Cabot, does a good job of handling the, often farcical, stage business and uniting the collection of three couples not communicating.

This is a worthy revival that will satisfy Ayckbourn fans and go some way to showing those not around at the time what all the fuss was about.    ★★★★☆     Graham Wyles  1^st September 2021

Read our interview with Michael Cabot, the play’s director, here