Alan Ayckbourn’s 1967 play takes a deceptively simple idea, stretches to what seems like breaking point, and then incredibly takes it further.
It’s basically four characters and one misunderstanding; but the writing is so sharp, and the central misunderstanding’s offshoots so brilliantly cultivated, that the play is one of the funniest I’ve seen.
Greg (Antony Eden) is intent on marrying girlfriend Ginny (Lindsay Campbell) but he fears she may be keeping something from him. The big clues that there may be another man include mystery bouquets of flowers, wrong numbers, and a pair of slippers two sizes too big for him under the bed. When he finds a cigarette packet with an address written on it Ginny claims it’s where her parents live, and she’s going to visit them over the weekend. In a grand romantic gesture Greg decides to go down to their country house and ask Philip (Robert Powell) and Sheila (Liza Goddard) for Ginny’s hand in marriage. Unfortunately, Philip and Sheila aren’t Ginny’s parents.
As the play unfolds it’s like some incredible high-wire act: it can only work by characters not asking certain questions and giving a fair number of ambiguous answers to the questions that are asked. Yet despite the sheer impossibility of what we’re seeing, it never feels forced and the audience never feels that Ayckbourn is cheating. Slowly some characters realise what is happening and then quickly have to alter their behaviour as they work out how best they can further their own ends.
All the performances are spot-on. Powell achieves a certain magnificence when he has to in effect answer the same question differently to three people at the same time. His confused ‘Yes! No! Yes!’ perfectly shows his confusion, despair and a certain bewilderment that’s he’s in the mess he’s in.
It’s probably worth mentioning that Relatively Speaking is based almost entirely around themes of infidelity and mistrust. However, it’s not as jaundiced as Ayckbourn’s later work though perhaps this is because, at some level, it doesn’t feel quite real. So much so that when one of the characters attempts to blackmail another into resuming an affair it seems an acceptable plot machination rather than something sinister and unpleasant.
The publicity shot on the theatre’s website showing Powell and Goddard chuckling in the direction of a newspaper as they eat breakfast made me very wary with its vague atmosphere of a mediocre ’70s sitcom. Don’t let it put you off as this really is a magnificent comedy.
Continues at the Theatre Royal, Brighton until Saturday 10.
For more details and tickets click here.