ABSENT FRIENDS, BY ALAN AYCBOURN REVIEW AT RICHMOND THEATRE

Thank you to the Richmond Theatre for inviting me to review “Absent Friends” on Tuesday evening. My good friend John O’Brien went on my behalf, because he is an Ayckbourn specialist, having written his MA thesis on him back in 1992 and also had a face to face meeting with him at his theatre in Scarborough.

John Carey, The Sunday Times chief book reviewer said this about his review – “That is an absolutely brilliant review of Absent Friends. I am a huge admirer of Ayckbourn but have never seen that play and now avidly want to. You make it crystal clear why he matters so much and so deeply. Many congratulations on your piece”.

So here is his review – you really should go and see it if you get a chance.

“Man will be better, when you show him what he is like.” Chekhov.

Alan Ayckbourn is the English Chekhov. He writes tragi-comedies in domestic settings such as tea parties, where the seemingly “normal” setting belies the tragic breakdown of individual lives. “Absent Friends” dates from 1974 and has been revived at the Richmond Theatre by London Classic Theatre to mark their 15th anniversary, directed by Michael Cabot.

Five friends arrange a tea party ostensibly to provide solace to the recently bereaved Colin. Stage time matches real time. The action is confined to a single set, brilliantly designed by Simon Kenny. One of the plays many ironies is that these “friends” can’t stand each other and moreover are in no position to offer Colin consolation. Rather the reverse. He offers them consolation. Colin arrives on stage half way through Act 1, much as the Inspector does in JB Priestley’s “An Inspector Calls”. He causes the whole tea party and all the relationships in the room to implode. Yet he thinks he is being kind.

Colin is a classic example of the cheerful wrecker. The sentimental man who brings disaster in his wake. Ashley Cook plays the part wonderfully. The excruciating scene looking at photos of Carol from his photograph album is cringe makingly awful but true. Ayckbourn is profound on many levels but especially in pointing out the unintended disastrous consequences of the well intentioned idealist. He has a vision as bleak as Beckett’s in “Waiting For Godot”, indeed “Absent Friends” feels like that play, set in middle class Surrey.

Acybourn’s vision is doubly bleak because not only are the bad characters pigs (none more so than John’s wife Evelyn superbly played by Kathryn Ritchie as a morose gum chewing monster, what Kate Moss would call a “basic bitch”; after having sex with Paul in the back of his car she says ”that was about as exciting as being made love to by a sack of clammy cement.”) But the so called good characters – like Colin – are in their way just as destructive. So it’s a catch 22 view of the world. Just as James Joyce saw Homer’s Ulysses on the streets of Edwardian Dublin so Ayckbourn can see Greek tragedy in suburban Surrey.

Ayckbourn is especially sensitive to the tragedy of women’s lives. He endorses Joyce Carey’s view that every woman’s life is a tragedy. Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex (1949), argued that the assassination of Clytemnestra in The Oresteia was the foundation text of patriarchy which closed the door on women in drama until Nora Helmer walked out 2,500 year’s later in “A Doll’s House”. Ayckbourn gives English drama its equivalent moment, it seems to me, with the unbearable breakdown of Diana – a middle aged housewife in “Absent Friends”, wonderfully played by Catherine Harvey.

In the play’s most memorable moment, she recalls her wasted life and screams Edvard Munch like, that she wants to join the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, that she has wanted to from childhood and knows she never will. At first the audience laughs because it seems absurd wanting to join the Royal Canadian Mounted Police but as Diana screams, cries and finally collapses onto the sofa we realise that this is a moment of unbearable pain and despair. Therein lies Ayckbourn’s genius as a dramatist. He is able to put characters on the stage in seemingly mundane situations and yet have them act out tragedies as profound as anything to be found in Aeschylus, Chekhov or Beckett.

The London Classic Theatre have put together a wonderful production of Absent Friends which is indeed a classic. I urge you to see it.