Driving Miss Daisy motors along charmingly

Script recap :  It's 1948, Atlanta, Georgia. There's a new old odd couple in town. A Southern Jewish matron Daisy, 72, and Hoke, 60, her Negro car driver. Daisy's in denial. Son Boolie has hoist her driver's license after she backed her new Packard across the lane and wiped out her neighbour's 2-car garage. He unilaterally appoints Hoke as her driver. Nothing against "coloreds" she insists, it's all about loss of independence and personal agency. We watch snippets of the lives of Daisy and Hoke over 25 years. And witness their relationship evolve -- the crotchety she and the subservient he -- as they become a lot chummier than when they start out. The film version starred Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy. It won best script adaptation and Best Picture at the 1990's Oscars, three years after the original off-Broadway stage show that won the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Fast forward. There has since been a curious 20-year-hiatus between the last stage performance of DMD and today. Hmnnn. Odd for such a gold medal launch both on stage and on the big screen in just a couple of years. But maybe no real mystery after all.

Why the gap ?  Critics whinge that Alfred Uhry's script is "lightweight", a "very slender work" that is "simplistic" and "romanticized". Probably that's in part because of the stereotypes of DMD's characters. In 1948 Daisy is an aging Jewish matron nearly 20 years ahead of Lyndon Johnson's civil rights laws. Hoke is an aging out-of-work Jim Crow Negro nearly 20 years ahead of Black Panther Huey Newton. Newton, recall, demanded that "black" replace the N-word, the n-word and even "colored".* And try as it might, the script presents viewers with caricatures instead of developed characters the way a Pinter or a Chekhov or a Munro would manage. 

Play & character snapshots :  DMD wanders merrily along as a series of stitched-together scenes that are clearly from Ozzie-&-Harriet's America. It's lite and lively and glad for the most part, occasionally a bit of sad thrown in, hardly ever mad except at the start in the play's set-up scenes. A proud Negro uber-servant is pitted against a proud Jewish matriarch. It's a stylized clash of wills -- less Jack v. Giant than Jack v. Jacqueline. But fact is we're dealing with a retired elementary schoolmarm and her motor car driver during the Truman / Eisenhower years. (Their characters are, reportedly, based on Uhry's own grandmother and her driver.) So Uhry's understated approach to his characters was doubtless in keeping with those times, honest both culturally and thematically. Also, DMD was Uhry's first produced play following the years he toiled as a song lyricist sponsored by composer Frank Loesser (he of Broadway's Guys & Dolls fame). That probably explains his characters' bantering, easy-on-the-ear dialogue.

Audiences like what they see : I have no doubt audiences relate to Daisy and Hoke in part because they are both from cultural / racial minorities from a time back in the day when blackface comedies were all the rage at social fundraisers. Underdogs almost always attract fans and friends. Mostly, though, I would suggest it's because Daisy and Hoke's interactions are *quaint* in the manner of geriatric grams-&-gramps the world over. We needn't learn from them so much as just appreciate them in a sentimental way. We view them and their attitudes and their manners as throwbacks to an earlier time when life was simpler and basic in a skin-deep way but, tellingly, racist and bigoted in the flesh. So. If we just permit ourselves to stay put at the skin-deep stage we can allow ourselves to be charmed and amused. Not unlike the swoon that viewers the world over fall into over the upstairs / downstairs antics in the manor known as Downton Abbey. Still, as Daisy actor Vanessa Redgrave put it three years back during a Broadway remount of DMD with James Earl Jones, can Uhry's script -- almost in spite of itself -- make our hearts "open and release" in 2014?

ACT's production : Director Mario Crudo made key decisions in how to present DMD to Vancouver this year. Primarily he elected to let the mannered stereotypes of Jewish matron Daisy (Nicola Lipman) and Negro car driver Hoke (John Campbell) play themselves out "straight". Not one scintilla of love interest between them as done in the Bruce Beresford film version. Really not much of a break-down-the-racial-barriers cum intimate platonic relationship with each other, either. 

No. Crudo obviously decided his version would simply play out a story of people who work together in close personal proximity over years. He would direct them to be like caregiver-&-patient toward one another. Because even in so doing that still permits their relationship to expand from a "clinical" one to a personal and poignant friendship. [Digression : I relate. I have a handful of former work colleagues whom I "love". I will always cherish the times we had together -- the work, the laughs, the tears, the sharing of time and space over so many years. We stay in touch. We have lunches and dinners. We will not likely, however, invite one another to our kids' graduations or weddings.]

As Hoke, Mr. Campbell evinces the role a one-down black servant would likely have had toward this white older woman who is his charge. He reflects the times -- the culture, demographics, racial / sexual apartheid -- he grew up with instead of the Huey Newton / Lyndon Johnson epoch he grew into as a senior citizen. Quite unlike what Morgan Freeman did in the movie. E.g. while Hoke recognizes some de facto parallels between Daisy being a Jew and himself being black, his subservience to Daisy is never in doubt. He can kibbitz with her, tease her, challenge and argue with her, even feed her Thanksgiving pie at the nursing home at play's end, but he's still the hokey Hoke, her manservant. No hint of equality here. And Mr. Campbell executes this chosen characterization of Hoke admirably. 

For her part Nicola Lipman as Daisy is the reason to drop everything you're doing right this second and go order tickets. Hers is a nuanced and subtle depiction. She tut-tuts both Hoke and Boolie with sharp-minded zingers and matriarch petulance. But most impressive by far is her deteriorating physical posture even while her brain, despite advancing dementia, enjoys moments of lucidity to reveal the finely honed edge of yesteryear. The script wouldn't permit me to believe her claim to Hoke late in the piece that "You're my best friend...!". Only by dint of daily physical proximity. Boolie is Daisy's best friend and they both know it. This most-often-cited quote, not to forget, occurs in the midst of an Alzheimer's moment : at age 95 or so Daisy's addled mind makes her believe that she's a 5th Grade teacher again and late for school. Still, the moment works, if not the quote : her grasping of Hoke's heavy cardigan sweater to lend her support -- lit.-&-fig. -- is simply wonderful acting to behold. And her nursing home turn just moments later literally brought a lump to my throat and a tear to my eye. 

As Boolie, Brian Linds projects a loving and loyal son whose frustration with Mom is ever mitigated by his wealth of feeling for her. Albeit Uhry's script wants us to focus on Daisy and Hoke, Mr. Linds steals an appropriate quantum of attention away from them by his solid performance.  Btw Mr. Linds also does the soundscape for the piece. Brilliant! A Don Shirley Trio knock-off with banjo riffs. Perfect hook among the sequences of short scenes.

Who gonna like : A large number of septugenarians in the seats on opening night clapped most vigorously. I suspect that cohort of theatregoers is the main target of ACT's production. But fans of the '90 flick will want to check out what live actors can do without all the expanse and wash of HD 35mm. film (or whatever the heck it is Hollywood uses these days). For myself I'd go again if only for Ms. Lipman's excellent execution and Mr. Linds' efforts in both his roles.

* Note : "Colored" is a word that is still employed by the century-old American social justice group, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, known S of 49 as the "N-double-A-CP". And if one is "black" it's okay to call another black person "nigger" as a term of brotherhood. Same as if one is "gay" today -- particularly if also a LBGTQ social activist -- it's okay to refer to oneself as "queer". I make no judgement here. Just reporting the vicissitudes and paradox of street language in the context of ACT's DMD play revival.

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Yin-yang buddies = The Odd Couple then & now

Plot quicky :  Since its launch in 1965, The Odd Couple's first act has been hailed by some critics as arguably the single-best scene of American comedy ever scripted for the stage. And maybe so. Even despite the considerable time-warp between that back-in-the-day moment and now.

Hot summer Friday night. New York City. Poker night at Oscar Madison's apartment where his mid-life bachelor gig plays out since his wife Blanche quit their marriage some six months back and escaped to California. The five players at the table take turns kvetching, snarling and growling about their lives, their wives, their fates and the crappy slow pace of the night's game. They scarf back leftovers out of Oscar's defrosted fridge -- whether aged cheese or mold doesn't particularly faze them. They fist their poker cards with gusto and throw chips and cards and commentary around as randomly as teenage burps or gas attacks.

Number six at the weekly table, Felix Ungar, is late, MIA. Unknown to his posse, his wife Frances has just drop-kicked him out of their house. When they learn this news, they fear he may be suicide-depressed. No wonder : he has just telegram'd his wife telling her that's what he is about to do. Divorce was typically a serious mid-life crisis for men back then -- marriage in the early 60's stood a 4:1 chance of succeeding. And both Oscar and Felix have failed the test. They are rejected husbands who work day-jobs, not lothario playboys of the Mad Men stripe who are serial cheaters. When Felix finally appears, his chums rally round to prevent a 12-storey fall from grace and the tale of Oscar-&-Felix and their upcoming life together under the same roof begins.

A Tale of Its Time :  I reckon no English-speaking North American can possibly not know of this iconic Neil Simon script. The original Broadway stage mount in '65 featured Walter Matthau and Art Carney. The 1968 movie paired Matthau with Jack Lemon. Then TOC morphed into a 70's t.v. sitcom starring Jack Klugman as Oscar and Tony Randall as Felix. To recap : both of Simon's characters are professional news writers, but that's about where the similarity ends. Oscar (Andrew McNee) is a highly-paid cigar-chomping sports gob whose preferred lifestyle is casual / messy / live-for-the-moment, not unlike many sports contests. He's often tardy with the alimony and child support payments because of his saloon skills and chronic poker losing streaks. Bosom buddy Felix (Robert Moloney), meanwhile, is a fuss-o-matic : a neat-freak finicky neurotic who writes straight news for CBS and likes life orderly, from kitchen utensils to emotions. So unlike the more cavalier Oscar, Felix is rattled to the core now that his right-tight world has fractured and splintered.

The yin-yang personality clash set up by Simon survives mostly because we are parachuted, wholesale, back into the early 60's -- pre-VietNam; pre-Woodstock; pre-Steinem's Ms. magazine and the advances of feminism since. Too, the play features two long-time male buddies who're thrust together by chance, not design. Were they man-&-wife there would be no play. Sexual politics ain't yuk-yuk. Particularly today. But two age-old chums from Ike's time who play poker together? They can riff and natter and scold one another like frat-rats because comic incompatibility works when played out at this level. Indeed, Neil Simon's gift to the stage throughout his storied career has always been to find scads of punchy laugh-lines right in the midst of existential fear, heartache, and the uncertainties that pounce when dreams go awry. No better vehicle than this frozen-in-aspic script to prove the point.

WYSIWYG :  Director John Murphy does what he often does with timepiece material. He madcaps the action with lots of slapstick blocking and choreography. Wildly contorted individual facial gestures, hyped-up coughs, Keystone cop chases, 3 Stooges pratfalls -- they're all part and parcel of the current ACT re-mount. Murphy does take liberties with his casting : the poker bunch, ostensibly all in their 40's, include a couple of sexagenarians whose ages belie Simon's dialogue. But no matter to the 2014 audience eye. Because the fact is many groups of friends nowadays, both men's and women's, include 2-3 generations all playing well together in the same sandbox : age differences matter way less now than they did to our folks. The NYC cop in the poker bunch, Murray, was played by Joel Wirkkunen who gave the most robust and witty turn of the group. But Josh Drebit's Speed as the ever-impatient card sharp was a mere 1/2 kph behind in comic delivery. Great body language in the card table routines from each of the older two, too -- Alec Willows as Roy, Oscar's long-suffering accountant, and Cavan Cunningham as the penny-pinching and henpecked Vinnie.

Murphy's slapstick approach coupled with direction to his cast to hyper-ventilate Simon's dialogue saves TOC from its fundamental irrelevance in today's uber-caffeinated-nanosecond-attention-span culture. Because who cannot laugh when Oscar tells the ever-agitated Felix early on : "You have a low threshold for composure. You're the only man in the world with clenched hair." But Simon also manages to make his characters empathetic, as well as comic, such as when Oscar confesses he's lonely living alone. He invites Felix to move in to his 8-room apartment : "I love you almost as much as you do," he says. "I'm proposing to you."

Felix agrees. And before the night is over he has antisceptick'd the entire pizza-box Chinese take-out carton gerbil-cage apartment. Director Murphy does this cleverly, having the poker bunch act as Felix's proxies to complete the task. Scene 2 opens on the next poker night with the set in full-Felix fashion : the table is decked out with coasters to prevent watermarks; oversize serviettes for all; BLT sandwiches on crustless pumpernickel; ashtrays emptied after each ash is flicked. But when Roy smells Lysol and ammonia on the playing cards, the group exits en masse stage left in a snit over F.U.'s fastidious buzz-kill of their Friday fun. Still, it's what Oscar sees as the "wimp factor" vis-a-vis wife Frances that drives him the most crazy. He puzzles at Felix rhetorically : "In a world full of roommates why do I choose the tin man?"

The second act looks promising for the odd couple. Oscar arranges a soiree with two British sisters, the Pigeons, who live in the same building. Felix, master chef, plans the meal, a London broil. But when widow Gwendolyn (Sasa Brown) and divorcee Cecily (Kate Dion-Richard) arrive, he goes nearly catatonic and can hardly talk due to first-date jitters. Only when Oscar repairs to the kitchen to fetch drinks does Felix warm up, showing the girls pix of his family. Felix whimpers "Divorce, it's a terrible thing." Cecily, with a perfect Liverpool lilt, quips back : "It can be if you don't have the right solicitor!" Immediately, however, she realizes Felix is in "unmanly" tearful pain. Soon there's a 3-way crying jag as they all swoon over their imperfect but lost marriages. In a heartbeat both of them love "poor, sweet, tortured" Felix.

Suffice to say the London broil burns to a crisp in the kitchen. A fire bell sounds, as if to signal the set's kitchen oven is on fire. But No!, truth is the hazer ACT was using to generate faux-smoke shorted out, smoked up a storm and set off the Stanley theatre alarm for real. The play resumed after a 14-minute delay as firefighters from two streets north re-set the alarm panel. [Well handled, ACT team!]

Back to script: The incinerated London broil forces the party to move to the Pigeons' apartment, but Felix demurs out of shyness and guilt over his ex-, Frances. Oscar both implodes and explodes over the botched date. Their ensuing hunt-&-chase around the apartment with Oscar threatening to kill his buddy was vintage. Even mid-chase Felix manages to straighten the dining table chairs and scoop up some paper litter off the floor. He's promptly sent packing but winds up, of course, bedding down with the Pigeons in their upstairs roost -- irony and fun being Simon's signature traits. 

N.B. The Pigeon sisters were very welcome comic relief within this comic romp. Relief because up till then the show had been as if plastered with For Men Only stickers given all the poker motif among a bunch of grunty post-WWII men. When the Pigeons descended, these two birds delighted at every move : they sat almost in each other's laps, finished each other's sentences, sported complementary 60's dresses, had matching red and blond bouffie hairdo's and shared a swack of Liverpool giggles. Pure fun !  

Production values :  David Roberts' set was a nice cut at 1965 Manhattan chic. Ceiling arches. Pale blues and pinks on the walls,  inset applique flower accents, scalloped furniture throughout, and a chrome floorstand ashtray to covet even for a non-smoker. Barbara Clayden's costumes were perfect for the times, even slobby Oscar's What Not To Wear blue/brown sport coat and pant mix. Marsha Sibthorpe's lighting was spot-on, particularly the solar eclipse blue lighting during scene changes by the poker bunch. And last but not least, sound designer Murray Price underscored the antics with some tight jazz quartet charts matching progressive sounds one would surely have heard at Birdland in the 60's.

Who gonna like : This is a period piece, as noted. Some may find the trip down memory lane a chance to smile and smirk, sentimentally, at the mores of a distant era. Others may find the dialogue too dated and man-centric for their liking, now, nearly 50 years hence. Still, Andrew McNee as Oscar brings a nuanced interpretation to his mostly macho role, and Robert Moloney does some fine excruciations as the tightly-wound Felix. Neil Simon is a master of the genre. His lines and timing provide much to amuse in a performance bursting with energy and wit. 

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A Brimful of Asha is pure Canadiana

A Brimful of Asha is a lively, witty and clever verbal memoir. Written by Ravi Jains, it is an extended conversation between his real-life mom Asha and Ravi himself. In 1974 she was an immigrant from the Indian sub-continent; a half-decade later along comes her cheeky Indo-Canadian second son. Now in his mid-30's, Ravi directs himself and his never-before-actress mom in the piece. The show takes place at a Toronto kitchen table, a shiny Ikea knock-off. Via yak-yak between mom-&-son, the show recounts his folks' manipulations to arrange a marriage for Ravi on a trip he made to India in 2007 to conduct a theatre workshop. He was footloose and fancy free then at age 27. A recent theatre arts specialty grad, he'd set his effervescent personality to the challenge of launching a theatre company in TO prior to his brief India gig. Marriage was without a doubt the last thing on his mind.

Now it's no great secret that arranged marriages for countless decades were de rigeur in India. Whether they were parents (plus grandparents, aunts, uncles &c) of boys or girls, families worked at match-ups, often using newspaper ads and resumes called bio/data to pre-screen prospects and their DNA pedigree. But also, out of superstition, to screen their place of birth, day of birth, and time-of-birth to triangulate just the right match. That the wealth of the prospective family might factor in to all this, oh perish the thought...

On stage Ravi's half of the dialogue consists of his riffing off memory-bits of his parents' pre-nup ambushes of him as he traveled across India, ambushes ad nauseam until he'd had it right up to the brim and over the top.

For her part Asha (her name means "hope" in Hindi) sits stoically at the table and responds to Ravi's gripes. She's no slouch or pushover. Basically she accuses her talented theatrical offspring of being Golden Globe Hopeless! in each of the Son category, the Man-Card category, the Marriage category, and the Common Sense category. These exchanges they pull off with such love and risible gusto, however -- smart-aleck 1st-gen son fends off mom's insistent but impish zingers -- that the crowd giggles almost incessantly throughout the show's 90 minutes.

This is not a typical stage play. This is staged spontaneity. Everyone is greeted with a hand-shake as they enter by both Ravi and Asha. They are invited on to the stage to enjoy a samosa (I scarf'd down two and was offered more). Ravi and Asha go up and down the aisles greeting folks with obvious pleasure. It's as if everyone's being invited to an outsize family reunion. 

No question, any pretext of a proscenium arch or 4th wall separating cast from audience goes poof. When Ravi introduces his mom at the start and she gets a big Woo-hoo! from the crowd, Ravi ad libs that she got a bigger welcome than he did. Well, she retorts, "The play is called A Brimful of Asha, not A Brimful of Ravi!" Even more huzzah's from the crowd. Throughout they invite the audience to shout-out their support for one character's version of "the truth" or the other's. Lots of laughs and claps for clever one-liners plus interjections of Oh no! and similar gasps and guffaws mark the progress of the night. E.g. when Ravi recalls his rules for marriage, number two is "I won't marry just anyone" to which Asha responds in a nano-second: "That's the stupidest rule I ever heard of." Uproar! throughout the room.

Mom explains she's desperate to hold on to her old country values. 

Ravi protests that he wants "love", not a "match". And he wants to do it in his own event-time mode, not mom and dad's clock-time mode. That in India everyone wants to know why Ravi is not yet married bothers him not one bit. His aunt, meanwhile, puts it this way : "Ravi, what's the matter with you? Just get married, get it over with, we'll have a party, it'll all work out!" At another point a relative chides : "Can we just sign the papers, break out the love juice and get on with it?" In exasperation Ravi tells his mom : "You and Papa should just consider me dead!" and Asha fires back : "We can't consider you dead until you're married!" Dare I say mostly the women did the laughing at that one?

Playwright Jains' devices of "scripted improv" and meet-&-greet the patrons is clever and effective. Mom and son disagreeing vigorously, yes, but both agreeing about the cultural gaps that occur between generations of immigrants. She admits she's hooked-back to the old country with its values. He, of course, champions the break-out urges of kids born in this exciting new world countless longitudes to the West. No doubt this all works in part because show-goers are often immigrant or 1st-2nd generation newbies here themselves. They can't help but relate to these culture clashes, particularly when they're wrapped up in Asha and Ravi's kitchen table patois. (Said patois included various soliloquies by Ravi in Hinglish to replicate the remembered family discussions : his dialogue tickled the ears with precisely the intended funnery.) But we know love is not all smirks and giggles. There are also shouts & murmurs, hints & allegations, tears of pain & cries of rage that round out this scene : family matters, all in all, good, bad and ugly.

So on the one hand the show is redolent of Ground Hog Day in its re-telling of the same basic tale time and time again. A 2-hander play with a 1-joke storyline, arguably. Gotta say there's a whiff of monotony to the mom-&-son exhanges, ultimately -- the show's perhaps 7-10 minutes wordy-ish -- and mom's lines are a bit monochromatic in tone and hard to hear on occasion. That she had never acted before this play helps explain it, for sure. So those are cheap-seat quibbles at best. Fact is both Asha and Ravi are wholly engaging, endearing, and heart-warming with big genuine smiles and laughs. They present as family, and they welcome the audience to join them as new-found cousins at this reunion. You will be charmed at both the dramatic wordplay and cultural exposure you enjoy. And the samosas are de-lish!

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Quartet aims at War Babies & Boomers

A slogan-pin popular with aging lotharios states : "The older I get the better I was." Or as the T-shirt on the octogenarian gentleman I see often at the gym proclaims : "Growing old ain't for sissies." Such as these might well be sub-texts behind the script of Quartet currently being performed by RAP Productions at the PAL Studio Theatre on Cordero Street.

Plot overview :  Like the Performing Arts Lodge (PAL) itself, the setting for Quartet is a retirement lodge. Designed to house musicians particularly, the fictional lodge focuses on four former opera soloists who a lifetime ago performed Giuseppi Verdi's "Rigoletto" together. Once again -- in their 8th decade of life -- through a combination of choice-&-chance they are thrown together anew. To honour Verdi, "the best composer for voice who ever lived", a gala is performed at the lodge on the anniversary of Verdi's birthday each October 10th. The dramatic tension in this comedy is whether the tenor, the baritone and the contralto from 30-years-back can convince the newest resident, the prima donna soprano, to join them in a reprise of the opera's 3rd act quartet at the upcoming gala. Along the way playwright Ronald Harwood has each of the characters reveal snippets of their long-ago selves, secrets and gossip, revelations of sexcapades both real and imagined from back in the day.

Character takes :  What gets the juice flowing in this script is the fact that prima donna soprano Jean (Yvonne Adalian) who's newly arrived was once married to the tenor Reg (Sean Allan) whom she divorced decades back in a nanosecond before wandering through 3-4 subsequent marriages. Reg is aghast that the lodge would take Jean in as a resident without consulting him first, given their history. He is apopleptic about her imminent arrival. His baritone buddy Wilf (David Petersen) is a widower -- a randy and priapic old lech. He poo-poos Reg's angst because he's too focus'd on wanting to mount the contralto Cissy (Wendy Morrow Donaldson) and/or any other female who comes to mind. 

When Jean arrives she delivers Reg a speech apologizing for ditching him shortly after their nuptials, asking that he treat her nice, and then promptly announces "There! I've done it. I've been practicing that for weeks!" Reg, who's a bookish art-nerd, finds the warmth of his enthusiasm for her apology is somewhat less than luke. The effervescent Cissy, meanwhile -- who avoids Wilf's droolish monologues toward her by donning earphones to listen to old opera CD's of them all -- emerges from one of these opera swoons to propose they re-mount the quartet for the Verdi gala. Jean is adamant. No! And that's final. Depressed at being at the lodge "on charity", she bivouacs in her apartment and weeps, rages and throws things for a couple of days. Reg softens. She is vulnerable after all, not just a heartless mannequin. He tells the other two only he might be able to coax Jean into being the 4th voice come October 10th.

First impressions : The Quartet script didn't get much pick-up after its 1999 initial production until Harwood re-jigged his book for a 2012 movie directed by Dustin Hoffman. In Hoffman's debut as a director (at age 75) the movie featured an all-star cast including Maggie Smith as Jean, Tom Courtenay as Reggie, and Billy Connolly as Wilf. In fact it was seeing the movie that prompted RAP Productions' Sean Allen and Camilla Ross, both PAL residents, to re-mount the original stage play version. One lesson that perhaps ought to have not been lost on RAP Director Matthew Bissett is that the Hoffman big screen show ran for 98 minutes, full-stop. That's some 25 or so minutes shorter than Mr. Bissett's Cordero Street stage version. Twenty-five minutes easily shaveable from the original script i.m.o. 

That said, the play is heartwarming and seasonal in its "all's well that ends well" plotline. Because both through their characters' lines and in real Vancouver life, too, the cast acts out this proposition : Life is not 'then'. Life is not 'when'. Life is now. And now is what you make of it. So get on with it. As Reg and Wilf and Cissy remind each other throughout : "NSP!" -- "no self-pity" permitted on the premises.

Jean isn't quite 'there' yet. She whines and whimpers and whinges in classic princess, prima donna mode : "I am a different person today than who I was -- that somebody shone in the firmament whose light is now extinguished!" Balderdash and bollix, Wilf says, commandingly. "No, you're not. Nor are we. We've aged, that's all. And it happened so fast we didn't have time to change. In spirit, I'm the same lovely lad I always was. I just happen to be trapped in a cage made of rusty iron bars."

Earlier, Reg tries to win Jean over to the quartet re-mount idea. "It's my opinion that performing again, albeit once a year, to an audience of our fellow residents, to members of staff, the odd visitors, is a way of reaffirming our existence."

The fun of it all : Most reviews focus on Jean's role in the piece and point to Cissy's part as "secondary" and even "least sympathetic". Not so in the RAP production. To this reviewer, Ms. Donaldson's Cissy is the glue that holds the production together. She has the brightest glint in her eye, she has the ginger snap in her lines, she has the gesticulations and blocking quick-step that make her character the most likeable and believable and rich. Aside from his "rusty iron bars" soliloquy that was grand, Mr. Petersen's Wilf character as drawn by Harwood is mostly a dowdy version of Artie Johnson the lech from t.v.'s Laugh-In days that Mr. Petersen does his damndest to flesh out. Reg is thoughtful to a fault, an impotent force when not in tenor mode, except for a seemingly odd-character lapse when he rages at one of the aides, repeatedly, for failing to give him marmalade for brekkie instead of jam. Sean Allen marks him well. As Jean, Ms. Adalian turns in a nuanced rendition of a somewhat crippled soul who finally grasps that "was" was then and except for a few CD re-mount sales, "was" don't matter no more to no one.

The Glenn MacDonald set of piano drawing room worked well, but even higher kudos to whoever chose the costumes from the stash provided to RAP by the United Players. Excellent throughout!

Who gonna like : This play is one we War Babies and the Boomers who followed us will appreciate for its insights into life after kids, the 'burbs, the careers, and the klieg lights. As a kind of play-within-a-play given the PAL connection of its cast, it proves the point of Wilf's soliloquy and does so touchingly. The characters offer insights into what last-chapter pages might read like for many of us if we're lucky enough to make it to the 8th and 9th decades of life or beyond. For that it's surely a "go". Despite its ploddy length particularly in the first act, the repartee between the characters is superb. The make-up scene prepping for the gala where they reveal their secrets and peccadilloes and truths from their pasts is where Harwood's script tickles and delights and the cast delivers very agreeably indeed. 

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It's Snowing on Saltspring great Xmas giggle

If David Mamet's House of Games is your idea of engaging stage humour, you probably won't want to see ACT's reprise of It's Snowing on Saltspring. Saltspring is Nicola Cavendish's iconic 1985 Christmastime total feel-good phantasy. Heavy on the dark and sardonic it definitely is not. 

Oh sure, it starts off with various stage tropes around mid-life crisis blue funk, pregnant-wife-estrangement, endless broods & buzz-kills from hubby. But with the wink of an eye in come some randy neighbours, a riotous Sandy Claws, kandy kanes and bag-after-bag of chocolate Viva Puffs. In short order it's one bejeesus big seasonal confection almost impossible not to giggle at -- whether again, or maybe, like me, for the first time.

Plot overview : Middle age dentist Bill Bannister (Andrew McNee) is married to a v-e-r-y pregnant Sarah (Juno Rinaldi) whose baby is coupla fat weeks past due. Bannister is freaking. Babies don't come with instruction manuals. But not just this is his source of angst. He's on a sabbatical from his Vancouver dentistry practice, too. Sarah explains "he's got the itch to run", just like his Dad did to him and his Mom three decades earlier when he was 10. But soon their neighbours sweep in -- the Kanes, wife Martha (Deborah Williams) and The Rev. hubby Kris (Joel Wirkkunen). Martha is a flutter of well-wishes, manic cleaning and puttering amidst a flurry of naughty one-liners such as "I smell hot rubber -- we're not interrupting anything here, are we...?" For his part Rev. Kris reels off seasonal bible verses like an eager circuit preacher, but his angelic quotes are delivered devilishly, eyes atwinkle to fit the season. Mid-verse he grabs Martha and does a vertical version of the horizontal mambo right in the Bannister kitchen. "Kris is full of the holy moly spirit!" Martha titters. 

Shortly the realtor who sold the fixer-upper to the Bannisters some months back, Bernice Snarpley (Beatrice Zeilinger), arrives. She's a Weyburn, SK gal come west after being jilted by her business partner / lover Shirl who after 15 years "out" opted back "in" for a hetero marriage. Snarpley has come to have Bill and Sarah sign a contract to sell the cottage in the new year. Seems our boy Bill hasn't told Sarah about his plans to do this so they can act out his phantasy to escape to the Canary Islands. Sarah explodes and hucks Bill his jammies to sleep on the front room couch. But not before she leaves a note for Santa : "Dear Santa. I believe in you. I believe in miracles. Please advise." Right on cue Santa arrives and whisks Bill away in a Rod Serling-esque dream sequence to the North Pole.

Act 2 provides Bill's deliverance -- comic, antic variations of Miracle on 34th Street stuff -- that finds Bill have his epiphany at last and drift back to the Christmas hearth on Saltspring a changed and chastened and cheerful reformed chump of a swell guy.

First impressions and character take :   As a newbie to this Cavendish script, I found Saltspring a small wonder. Sentimental, sure, but in a madcap farcical kind of way. Not preachy or larded with homilies, just a bunch of witty epigrams to reflect the better angels we try to coax out of one another this time of year to scare away winter blahs and crud. 

As with so much comedy, the first act is an extended build-up to the fast-paced second act where all the conflicts find resolve. And it is the second act of Saltspring that had folks behind me exclaiming "Oh, wasn't that just so much fun!" while more than one 50-something couple grinned at one another and held hands on their way out.

The secret to the fun of this piece is the excellent cast ensemble selected by Director Lois Anderson. As scripted by Cavendish, The Rev. Kris and Martha Kane from Act 1 morph into Sandy and Martha Claus at the second act's North Pole. Snarpley becomes head elf Grindle O'Darby in pig-snout headgear, while Sarah plays Grindle's main grab Peggy. The dialogue is in cute rhymed couplets the whole scene in the sing-songy cadence of 'Twas The Night Before Christmas.

This Christmas Eve Santa's factory at the North Pole is a madhouse. Grindle has a major toothache he's medicating with liquor. The toy conveyor belt filling Santa's sleigh is broke. The dozens of helper elves are whooping it up farting and kai-yai-ing instead of wrapping and packing. Martha yells out the window to whoever is bombarding the scene with music : "My nerves, my nerves are frightfully shattered / Play it tomorrow when it doesn't matter!" And in all the raging pandemonium it is the sight gags of Wirkkunen and Williams as Santa and Martha throwing their sizable girths at one another, blowing kisses, feigning the nudgy-wudgy, pirhouetting around the stage like manic overfed fire ants that make this a laugh-out-loud hoo-ha.

As Bill Bannister, Andrew McNee delights. His reversion to his kleptomaniac youth, even stealing from Santa, was a spot-on touch. Any adult who's had a bout or two of existential angst will relate to his rants and fits and goofy "Let me out of this nightmare, now!" moments. Juno Rinaldi as Sarah is just right as the chirpy, spunky wife who tries desperately to cling to hope and good cheer while living with a man who used to make her laugh but is now Drudge One.  Beatrice Zeilinger with her droll no-nonsense schtick brought to mind Frances McDormond's Marge Gunderson in Fargo. When the atmosphere gets a bit tense between Bill and Sarah she remarks, deadpan : "Times like this I just wanna hook up the power washer, put on a little k.d. lang and blow the dirt out of everything!" Perfect SK farm gal with heart as big as the prairie.

Production values : As a Cariboo cabin owner, I was struck instantly by Set Designer Ted Roberts' excellent rendition of the getaway rural place with its vaulted ceilings, Franklin stove against rock firewall, and Sally Ann puke green chesterfield. But his transformation of that set to Santa's workshop at the Pole with the colourful toys and boxes oozing out of every pore of the stage and the stacks of fileboxes with old Letters to Santa was even more to celebrate. Kudos, too, to the stage-hands who expertly flipped the props and scenery in mere seconds between the two sets. Bravo! indeed.

Costume Designer Darryl Milot did not miss one detail in outfitting these characters. Tribute in the program to original designer Phillip Clarkson tells me Mr. Milot followed much of his predecessor's lead for 2013. The Mr. & Mrs. Claus outfits were particularly delicious, as were the O'Darby pig-snout get-ups. 

Lighting by Alan Brodie flipped appropriately from plain to festive to circus-like, while Sound Designer Michael Rinaldi (actor Juno Rinaldi's husband) focus'd mainly on secular Xmas tunes with only a bit of religio-Christmas-y stuff -- just right for this piece. Ronaye Haynes doing the mega-puppets Karma the dog and Rudie the reindeer were fun bits throughout, particularly the robustious Karma who's all jump-up and slaver and loving bother. (Remember the bumpersticker quip "My karma ran over your dogma"...? I bet Cavendish did when she wrote this!)

Who gonna like : Maybe a bit sexified for grammar school juniors, but highly recommended for +8's and adults alike. You owe it to yourself to enjoy the season's spark and mirth and spontaneity and magic this production provides -- you can't help but be charmed! 

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Corks popping for ACT's Mary Poppins

A quick look back : Maybe it's time to admit that the 1964 Disney movie version that made Julie Andrews a star had little in the way of character dynamics for either Andrews or the indefatigable Dick Van Dyke. And it was that absence of dynamic, even more than the Disney animations, that likely caused author P. L. Travers to sob at the end of the movie's premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. In retrospect, maybe Andrews should have been given a wee bit of brimstone & treacle mouthwash to make her somewhat more nanny-ish and less the goddess-fairy that Walt had her be. 

Fast-forward to 2013 and ACT's stage-musical re-mount of the Travers stories. In this version Mary P. is less a toothy-white magical charmstress, slightly edgier -- not quite a "pitbull with lipstick" -- but closer, if only a couple of centimetres. And one can't help but think that the waspish and acerbic Travers, who died at age 96 in 1996 still not suffering fools gladly, would appreciate the changes from the movie version that she abhorred (though it made her a multi-millionaire as she received 5% of the movie's gross receipts, currently 25th all-time highest at more than $635M).

First impression : Many folks who fondly remember Disney's MP film recall its magic turns -- the legerdemain, the illusion, the trickery pulled off by Mary and Bert. Such stuff, though still there, is not the source of magic in the current ACT production. No, the magic witnessed opening night is in the fact of the hand-picked cast of actors and performers selected by Director Bill Millerd and choreographer extraordinaire Valerie Easton. As individuals and a troupe they explode off the Stanley Theatre stage with unmatchable vigour, enthusiasm and just plain fun. One elderly couple of theatre veterans remarked on their way out : "I enjoyed every single bit of this play from start to finish!"  
-and- "I honestly think this is the best stage play I've ever seen in Vancouver." For song-&-dance enthusiasts to disagree with those sentiments would be, I think, but to quibble.

Plot overview : This may sound cynical, but the script of MP is really just a long-drawn-out extension of the Harry Chapin ballad about a dad being a bad dad because he's always too busy for his family : Chapin's Cat's In The Cradle still gets air play ad nauseam on soft-favourites radio channels. Set in Victorian England, dad George Banks (Warren Kimmel) is a banker -- an overworked and stressed one at that. His wife Winifred (Caitriona Murphy) is a gentry-wannabe trying to manage the household with its two kids, maid/cook, and inept butler. As befits gentry-wannabe's, the raising of the children is outsourced to a nanny. Rather to a half-dozen of them in the past year the kids are so bratty, scheming and seemingly uncontrollable. The play opens with the most recent nanny fleeing #17 Cherry Tree Lane. The kids draw up their ideal nanny mock-ad : she must 

Take us on outings, give us treats

Sing songs, bring sweets

Never be cross or cruel, never give us castor oil or gruel

Love us as a son and daughter

Dad George blows a gasket, tears up their clever wish list and whistles it into the fireplace. Karma clicks in. Who should appear with a Poof! but Mary Poppins (Sara-Jeanne Hosie). Dad is all aflutter. He wants precision, order, efficiency in his domain, but complains "We're living in a mad house!" Mary marches the kids upstairs with her customary refrain of "Spit spot!" and her two-part reign with the kids begins : says son Michael (Graham Verchere), "We best keep any eye on this one, she's tricky...!" He would be just young and wise enough to get his own double entendre there.

WYSIWYG : The current stage play is musical comedy that is a pastiche of Travers' Mary Poppins books (she wrote eight of them between the mid-30's and the late-80's), the Disney script, the original Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman songs, and an updated book by Downton Abbey's creator Julian Fellowes with new songs and additional music and lyrics by Englishmen George Stiles and Anthony Drewe. Hilarious, I found, that Travers had a provision in her will that nobody who worked on the Disney film could be a part of producer Cameron Mackintosh's proposed live theatre mount (he of "Cats", "Les Miserables", "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Miss Saigon" stage-play fame). Contributors all had to be English, no Yanks allowed, thanks. Under Walt they had all conspired to sentimentalize her Mary Poppins character, sweetened her beyond recognition, and wrote a simple-minded cotton-candy version that she thought was cynical in the doing. In the introduction to a HarperCollins re-issue of the original Travers book from 1934, Mackintosh declared : "Mary Poppins is, and always will be, unique : stern, dependable, businesslike, magical and yet eternally loveable." Travers felt too much of the "stern" and "businesslike" were lost in the Disney/Sherman movie version, apparently.

Character take : Five characters, particularly, deserve individual shout-outs for their work in this production. 

As Mary, Sara-Jeanne Hosie is probably as close to perfection as possible. Her set jaw, her disapproving scowl when the kids or parents misbehave (the "stern" and "businesslike" stuff) are counterbalanced by her whimsy when it's time to fun -- terrific comic turns each one. Her singing voice is melodic and even powerful at times, though the mezzo soprano range suits her more than the upper octive soprano stuff. Marvelously crisp execution of Director Millerd's scene blocking and Easton's dance footwork, too. Mesmerizing to watch from moment-one to moment-end.

As Bert, Scott Walters warrants an extra Bravo! or two from me because he discharged forever the memory of Mr. Van Dyke's one-dimensional face-cracking smileiferous performance in the Disney movie. Walters was wondrously engaged in his role, displaying dynamic and clever facial shifts and nuances to suit every line, every step-ball-change dance step and kick-up. 

Susan Anderson as Mrs. Brill and the Bird Woman in the park huckstering two-pence breadcrumb bags was non-pareil in execution. Her comic timing of panic ! disapproval ! and sheer aghastness ! at the Banks' "mad house" was split-second "Spit spot!" each line, each moment. Bird Woman was pure zen.

As Michael Banks, Grade 6 student Graham Verchere bloody well nearly aces his performance as a Brit-kid snot with lots of love in his heart to match his mischievous and playful soul. His sustained British accent -- assuming he isn't British-born -- was astonishing. 

Grade 7 student Kassia Danielle Malmquist played Michael's sister Jane, and she, too stayed 100% in character with charm and typical 13-year-old older sister flippancy and toy-tossing snitteries. 

Character take, Part 2 : It's impossible, really, to review this play without extending Huzzah's to all the actors and performers for their contributions. Mom Winifred by Caitriona Murphy was wholly convincing as a bemused and slightly estranged wife. Katey Wright pulls off replacement-nanny -- Dad's childhood nanny Miss Andrew ("The Holy Terror") -- with robust dislikability. Warren Kimmel as the "Harry Chapin dad" struck terror in my heart when he exploded. Well done indeed. (His "conversion" to huggy-dad -- like the lightning that struck Saul on the road to Damascus -- was perhaps too quick to convince, but that's a script problem, not Kimmel's.) Then there's the twelve performers in the song-&-dance Ensemble. To a person they were just step-perfect from my up-close-&-personal perspective in Row 2.

Production values :  Choreographer Valerie Easton -- current Artistic Director of Royal City Musical Theatre -- is to this viewer's eye simply brilliant ! each and every time I see her work. Her staging of "Step In Time" was so spot-on with all the chimneysweeps in taps and everyone gamboling at breakneck speed across the entire proscenium at the Stanley that I'd go to the show a second time for that number alone. Same with the familiar "Supercalifragilistic..." dance number, "Jolly Holiday", oh hell's bells, every one of them.

Costume Designer Sheila White's togs for everyone were rich, even when they were the streetrags of the chimney sweeps. Better costumes for the period-timing would not be imaginable. The colour interjections of reds in the park dance scene were a touch.

Set Designer Alison Green's sets all worked great both visually and "choreographically". With its two storeys, the Cherry Tree Lane home played effectively by exploiting both levels. The sight-gag of Mary pulling a coat-tree, floor lamp and wall mirror out of her kit-bag upon arrival was a crowd-pleaser. For their part, all the drop-screens for the park scenes were cleverly wrought and painted -- aided and abetted by veteran Lighting Designer Marsha Sibthorpe's shadowy birds and raindrops flashing about quite merrily. 

Who gonna like : I mentioned to my seat-neighbour that personally I tend to prefer the kinds of scripts most recently reviewed by BLR, the more intimate stuff of Venus In Fur, Armstrong's War, Relatively Speaking. But, I confessed, as big-stage song-&-dance entertainment with wonderful music from the Bruce Kellett orchestra behind, this Mary Poppins is finger-snappin' and heart-strings-pulling stuff tailor-made for the winter holiday season. It's the one time of year that a wee dose of sentimentality about "the goodness that lurks in people's troubled hearts" is okay already. For choreography, visuals and delightful tunes in a package, this one's a Go! for sure. 

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Relatively Speaking still a hoot some 50 years on

Forget p.c. Forget western society's grudging baby-steps toward gender equality in the past few decades. Drop yourself back into the ethos between the time of Mad Men and the "Swinging 60's". Then hie yourself to Western Gold Theatre's production of Relatively Speaking being staged at the PAL stage on Cardero to hear yourself LYFAO. Because that's what the ingenious 1965 script by England's comic master Alan Ayckbourn, written when he was just 27, demands of viewers even 50 years on.

Plot overview :  Two young lovers, Ginny and Greg, have been canoodling in Ginny's flat in London since they met a month earlier at a party. Ginny has claimed Greg's virginity, and he's utterly schmitten. He proposes to her, albeit off-handedly, on the spot. She says she needs to go visit Mom and Dad in the country to warm them up to the prospect of a son-in-law. The morning has already witnessed a few mysterious phone calls, a pair of oversize men's slippers under Ginny's bed, myriad bouquets of flowers and boxes of chocolates littering the place. All of this has Greg suspicious that the more worldly and sexperienced Ginny is still attached to another lover, but ultimately Greg clings to his naif persona. This is *love*. I believe in it. I'm going with it.  So, unbeknownst to Ginny, he also trains it out to her "parents'" place in Buckinghamshire to seek their blessing of the impending nuptials. He arrives there ahead of her. Here's where the fun starts :  it's immediately apparent to the audience this is really the country home of Ginny's older lover, her ex-boss, and his adultered wife. With Greg understandably thinking they are her parents -- has his true love Ginny not told him this repeatedly? -- the ensuing comic possibilities are thus rampant and rife. 

The play occurs over two acts, four scenes, in two hours. Act 1 is a long-ish and slightly tedious exposition of Ginny and Greg's blossoming romance aimed, now, at marriage though they've only known each other some four weeks. By way of contrast, in Scene 2, we meet the "parents" taking sun in their garden with "Dad" Philip grousing about an inferiour marmalade "Mom" Sylvia has bought and wishing for jam instead. Shortly, no doubt projecting some guilt over his own extra-marital dalliance, he accuses his wife of having a not-so-clandestine affair. When Greg arrives and engages the affable Sylvia in chit-chat, thinking her his mother-in-law to be, Philip is convinced Greg is Sylvia's lover. Soon Ginny arrives. Her purpose is to cut Philip off for good once-&-for-all. Stop with the flowers and the chocolates and the phone calls. When she finds, alors!, that Greg is also there helping the phony "Mom" prepare lunch, well, the stage is set lit.-&-fig. for a jolly merry romp. And it is !

Act 2 becomes a silly but wondrously clever caper of lies, tightly-crafted miscues, confusion and panic all borne of various levels of mistaken identity that dodge-&-swerve past one another. It's comedy-lite with no subtext messaging or serious intent whatever -- a wordplay game being played strictly for the fun of it. I was reminded instantly of that old hippie quip about people who talk at cross-purposes : "I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm afraid what you heard is not what I meant."
(N.B. See post-script summary comments by playwright Ayckbourn below on the how/why RS script came to be.)

First impressions and character-take :  It was apparent there were two audiences in the same PAL room at the same time watching this revival : Group 1 who for years have known and treasured Ayckbourn's comic jibes at middle class marital anxieties and hypocricies, and Group 2 who somehow haven't. Group 1 types like myself enjoyed the show for sentimental reasons if for no other. Newbies to Ayckbourn, like my buddy, could not resist these stereotypical Brits caught with their knickers, and their mores, at half-mast. Lots of gigglery from both groups.

Director Anthony F. Ingram made just-right picks in all categories. In the end the show-stealer had to be wife Sheila Carter played wonderfully deadpan by Anna Hagan. She is the steady loyal country wife who welcomes complete strangers to her garden and treats them to lunch and sherry. In executing the role without an iota of falseness or exaggeration about her character, she is the perfect foil for all the eager animation of the others around her. Her A-ha! moment at the end, and the final hint to hubby she in fact may have a paramour after all, was sheer fun. 

As husband Philip, Terence Kelly masters a range of facial contortions that delight every moment as they champion each of life's emotions -- mad, sad, glad -- sometimes serially, sometimes atop one another. Prime-time performance for sure.

Stacie Steadman plays Ginny, and she too provides just the right range of conflicting emotions : from coy coquette to mischievous deviant to genuine lover, current and ex- both. 

Fiance Greg is played brilliantly throughout by Jay Hindle. His is the best-written of Ayckbourn's character dialogue in this piece i.m.o. -- all eagerness and wonder and happy puppy -- think Odie, here, of Garfield comic strip fame. 

As an ensemble, the WGT troupe clicks delightfully. 

This viewer was, meanwhile, a bit bemused by the mix of accents coming at me : hard-working Brit white collar efforts from Ginny and Greg; quasi-Brit from Philip; Canuck from Sylvia. That's more niggle than outright natter at director Ingram's varied stage instructions to the cast, however : fact is to my untrained ear Hindle and Steadman project bloody good accents that ring true. They bring out Ayckbourn's ever-so-English milieux (quite properly -- I can't imagine this piece being written by a North American).  

The key to Ayckbourn's word-trickery b.t.w. is its grammar scheme -- viz. the lowly pronoun. By ever-avoiding names attached to the "he", "she", "his" and "her" reference points in the dialogue, confusion can only reign, which Ayckbourn does masterfully. In day-to-day conversation I regularly scold folks I yak with : "Hold on a second, I've lost the antecedent to your pronoun. Who the heck are we talking about here -- your daughter or your dog...?"

Production values :  Set designer Glenn MacDonald creates a clever two-fer set anchored in brickwork. From 60's studio flat strung through by clotheslines adorned with towels, shirts and sheets; tables and chairs enshrouded with blankets; Stones, The Who and Moody Blues posters plastered on the walls; ersatz pine 3-drawer dresser; and, best of all, the roll-away bed ! oh gawd spare me such memories. 

Pull all that montage and mish-mash away and the set morphs into a tasteful country garden whose brick is adorned with iron grillwork planters and a classic Greek peeing boy-statue that Philip uses to clean his paws with. For her part, costume designer Sydney Cavanagh puts all the right clothes on all the right characters -- the frumpish country Carters nicely counterbalanced by the more au courant togs of Ginny and Greg. The soundscape backdrop of a Tubular Bells-like version of the Beatles' You Say Good-bye and I Say Hello was spot-on.

Who gonna like : The wait until Act 2 for the magic of Alan Ayckbourn's verbal sleight-of-hand to fully engage the viewer is well worth it. Folks weary of t.v. sit-com schlock and formula contemporary comedy who love language and all its myriad possibilities for meaning will delight in both AA's quick-tempo script and WGT's interpretation. "Stuck" people protesting "the ethos between the time of Mad Men and the 'Swinging 60's'", well, maybe they should just stay at home & give this one a miss.

P.S. See the following notes about the script from various sources.

> Reason for the play : While working as a sketch writer for Ronnie Barker (of The Two Ronnies fame), Ayckbourn, then 27, was asked by Scarborough Theatre artistic director Stephen Joseph for a play "...which would make people laugh when their seaside summer holidays were spoiled by the rain and they came into the theatre to get dry before trudging back to their landladies."

> Structure of the play : Stephen Joseph also assured Ayckbourn "...there's absolutely no harm whatsoever, whatever you think of the state of the theatre and playwriting in general, to try and write a 'well-made' play [a la Noel Coward]; that is, a play, that, in general terms, is fairly actor-proof, well-constructed and works..." 

> Playwright's cut at his own script and its conceit : "Relatively Speaking is a little machine of a play. Character plays a fairly secondary role in it -- everybody's too busy trying to find out what's going on and 'character' doesn't have a chance... Plays like RS are continually knotting and unknotting. There's never a moment when somebody isn't discovering or about to discover something."

> Creating the play : "The devious plot was the result of sheer frenzy and the dialogue of tearing haste. In just over a week the play was written, aided by my wife's blue pencil, her constant suggestions and her cups of coffee."

An adrenalin buzz it surely is, readers, once the momentum swings into action in Act 2. Fun fun fun writ large. Until Dec. 1st. With 2 p.m. Sat-Sun matinees, too.

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