Bedroom Farce
Bedroom Farce
Stagestruck NYC
November 6, 2008
The Actors Company Theatre (TACT) is presenting Alan Ayckbourne's aptly
named Bedroom Farce at the Beckett Theatre on Theatre Row, West 42nd
Street, in a deft portrayal of the relationship of four couples on a single night.
True to its name, the stages is set with three bedrooms in three different
houses or flats all visible on stage at once. The simple math immediately
caught my attentions: four couples, three bedrooms, what's wrong with this
inequality? This comedy is sent in motion by that disproportion; one couple,
the hapless Trevor and Susannah, in the midst of a marital melt-down, are
bent upon imposing their bitter fights and maudlin laments upon their friends, first destroying Malcolm and Kate's housewarming party, then upon party guest Jan and her husband Nick (the latter has stayed home in his own bed nursing a bad back) and finally in the bedroom of the older couple, Ernest and Delia, Trevor's parents. Susannah flees to Delia and Ernest after glimpsing her husband Trevor kissing his former girlfriend Jan at the party. Meanwhile Trevor, having ruined the housewarming party, flees to the bedroom of Jan and Nick where he clumsily attempts to 'patch things up' with Nick for kissing his wife.
There is no sex beyond a single kiss in this bedroom farce, so what comic
business goes on in the bedrooms? The couples assemble furniture from a kit eat kippered fishes on toast, answer phones ringing at inconvenient
times of night, while three of the couples reveal the smaller cracks in their
own marriages that are stressed by the comings and goings of the clumsy
Trevor and/or Susannah.
The acting is delightful, and I particularly commend Cynthia Harris and
Larry Keith for their portrayal of the long-married couple Delia and Ernest,
Scott Shafer as the bed-bound Nick, and Mark Alhadeff as the clumsy Trevor, who is eternally professing himself 'sorry' but always clueless as to the trouble his visits cause to everyone else. Don't look for deep meaning in
this light comedy, but it is a pleasant diversion upon the theme that no
marriage is perfect.