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If
you're still stuck for something to occupy your Saturday, one of
our playwright knights, Alan Ayckbourn, offers another opportunity
to while away an entire day in the theatre with his Damsels in
Distress trilogy, newly opened at the Duchess.
Sir
Alan's set of contemporary comedies offers plays that are different
in plot and characters, but not in set or actors.
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| Alan
Ayckbourn's new trilogy has recently opened at the Duchess |
All
of them happen to take place in the same swanky Docklands riverside
apartment and are populated by the same immensely versatile actors.
Thematically,
they're united only by the fact that each play features women in
various states of physical or emotional crisis, hence the umbrella
title Damsels in Distress.
Individually
In
RolePlay (easily the best of the three plays), a couple are
preparing for the arrival of their respective parents when a gangster's
moll literally drops in from the apartment above as she tries to
escape her minder's clutches and then proceeds to wreck havoc on
the dinner party that follows.
In
the somewhat bleak GamePlan, a woman who once used to run
offices is now forced to clean them to make a living, while her
16 year-old daughter turns to prostitution to help her mother out
financially.
And
in FlatSpin, a young would-be actress finds herself unwittingly
embroiled in a drug bust when she freelances as an apartment caretaker.
Scene-stealing
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| Damsels
in Distress: near-classic Ayckbourn with a superb ensemble cast |
While
only RolePlay strikes me as the kind of classic Ayckbourn comedy
that left me simultaneously weak with laughter and touched by recognition
of the foibles of its very human characters, the joy of seeing all
three plays lies in watching this superb, though largely unknown,
acting ensemble assume such a range of different roles.
In
the process, this company - who did these plays first at the Stephen
Joseph Theatre that Ayckbourn runs in Scarborough in Yorkshire -
knock the socks off most of their starrier West End counterparts.
Among
the names to watch out for in the future: the astonishing Alison
Pargeter goes hilariously from streetwise moll to insecure actress
to geeky schoolgirl in a series of turns that would, individually,
make her career but now must surely make her a star.
The
other scene-stealing performance is from Jacqueline King,
who as the sozzled mother of the host in RolePlay can be relied
upon not only to say the wrong thing but also the most truthful.
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