Sharp as an arrow

Four couples but only three available bedrooms is the brilliant stratagem devised by Alan Ayckbourn for his 1975 relationship comedy Bedroom Farce.

Four couples but only three available bedrooms is the brilliant stratagem devised by Alan Ayckbourn for his 1975 relationship comedy Bedroom Farce. It’s being revived at the Rose Theatre in Kingston in repertory with a rather different take on coupled life, Strindberg’s Miss Julie, for an aptly named season, ‘Behind Closed Doors’. The three separate bedrooms fill up the unusually wide lozenge-shaped stage of the new Rose (modelled on the Elizabethan original) as our four couples writhe and wrangle under the spotlight of Ayckbourn’s all-seeing, all-knowing wit.

Ernest and Delia who occupy the pink satin boudoir with en-suite bathroom on the far left are dressing up for their annual anniversary dinner in black tie and pearls (a bit odd even for the Seventies). Malcolm and Kate share the unmade, duvet-strewn love nest in the middle; while grumpy Nick lies bedridden with a pulled muscle in the stripey bedroom on the right, efficiently nursed by his long-suffering wife Jan. It’s the fourth couple — jangly, neurotic, troublesome Trevor and Susannah — whose lack of a bedroom throws everyone else into confusion.

Ayckbourn perfectly captures the repressed tensions of settled suburban married life. ‘You can tell a great deal from people’s bedrooms,’ says Ernest in the first act. Muffled giggles from the Kingston audience. Ernest, though, is much more worried about the state of his gutters. The giggles turn into laughs. When Delia recommends to Susannah, ‘If sex rears its head, close your eyes before you see the rest of it,’ the laughs become huge guffaws.

It’s not what these couples say to each other, but the way even Malcolm and Kate always talk at each other, never quite connecting, which creates the laughs. The comedy is always sharp as an arrow, but never deadly. We laugh with Ernest, not at him, and feel Kate’s misery as Trevor and Susannah in their Munch-like angst expose the superficiality of her child-like banter with Malcolm. No one is safe, yet no one is left to flounder in misery. By the end everyone returns to where they were at the beginning, for it all to begin again, but perhaps with more understanding next time round.

Peter Hall directs, bringing together an expert cast who spark off each other with perfect comic timing, especially Nicholas Le Prevost as Ernest and Jane Asher as Delia. Finty Williams is an infectiously giggly Kate while Lucy Briers as Jan suggests her true feelings for Trevor with the faint movement of a booted leg.