Bedroom Farce
Bedroom Farce
Backstage
A.J. Mell
October 15, 2008
Alan Ayckbourn's Bedroom Farce makes a welcome return to the New York stage, looking quite agile after a 30-year absence. A strangely underperformed playwright in the United States, Ayckbourn is a ubiquitous presence in the British theatre. He's written more than 70 comedies ? most examine the foibles of the English middle class ? and had a staggering 41 West End productions. Such facility and industriousness inevitably raises suspicions of hackdom, but for all of Ayckbourn's slickness, it's difficult to resist his elegantly constructed plots and ingenious use of theatrical space.
The setup for Bedroom is a characteristically intricate juggling act: four couples interacting in three separate bedrooms over the course of a single night. Trevor (Mark Alhadeff) and Susannah (Eve Bianco), a young couple on the skids, attend a housewarming party where Trevor is discovered kissing his ex-girlfriend Jan (Margaret Nichols). Comic mayhem ensues, as Trevor and Susannah impose their marital angst on friends and in-laws into the wee hours of the morning.
The title and the three-bedroom set might lead one to expect a frantic, door-slamming farce in the Noises Off vein, but Ayckbourn and director Jenn Thompson have something more subtle in mind. For all its complicated architecture, the play is primarily a droll observation of human behavior under stress. Thompson keeps things moving at a lively but unhurried pace.
Ayckbourn's humor is more situational than verbal ? his dialogue doesn't seem particularly hilarious on the printed page, but the cast's frequently offbeat line readings uncover a good deal of comic nuance. Alhadeff's Trevor is a hilarious study in oblivious self-absorption, and Bianco's Susannah, a constantly-sobbing basket case, manages to be annoying and endearing at the same time. Larry Keith and Cynthia Harris as Trevor's parents serve as the perfect counterweight to the younger couple's instability. Reserved but good-hearted, they seem as comfortable together as a pair of old shoes.