Bradley Coffey, Steven Adams Photography Miles Davis
Simon Jenner October 22nd 2024
Five into four will have to go. Alan Ayckbourn’s Confusions, a suite of five short plays turns 50. Brighton Little Theatre have sensibly removed the last darker piece, A Talk in the Park, a quartet of monologues, and with a slightly extended interval Confusions still runs to two hours till October 26th.
Directed by Ann Atkins we’re first treated to Mother Figure and the third playlet Between Mouthfuls. Hopscotched between Tina Sitko directs the second, Drinking Companion and the longest, free-standing after the interval: Gosforth’s Fete. Don’t miss this rarely-revived gem.
Rarely since in 1974 Ayckbourn wanted to create a virtuoso ensemble piece with recurring characters or those with tacit links to another play. You’d search hard though to recognise wannabe lothario Harry in Drinking Companion is the estranged husband of Lucy in Mother Figure. Brilliant though this is, it’s not standard fare.
Confusions also skewers 70s sexism so sharply you’d think Ayckbourn decided to drop men into formaldehyde. Perhaps it’s cruel to hoik them out with blotched skins to move in jerks across the stage. But watching BLT’s excellent (unblotched) cast, you feel they deserve it. Steven Adams’ set abstracts the play’s title across the back wall as various sofas and props whizz in and out of this brightly-painted jamboree of 70s pot-paints. It recalls children’s TV Magpie, which certainly suits the first play. Colour is then stripped back and video projections of lounge and restaurant take over – Adams working with lighting designer Beverley Grover. Finally…we’ll come to tents later.
Suzanne Heritage
Mother Figure
Kirilly Long’s Lucy bestridesMother Figure like an infantilising colossus, with every nuance shifting as she begins to move her visitors out of their world, a world she distrusts, into her own. Shouting to offstage children as she carries in washing, picking up and slamming down an importunate phone-caller, she’s visited: and certainly doesn’t want to be. “I don’t take much notice of bells” she explains.
First Suzanne Heritage’s Rosemary from next door, nosing trouble, and later Rosemary’s husband Terry (Myles Locke, also costume designer). Heritage in her nosiness and then built-in resentment played upon here, is matched by Locke’s horribly unreconstructed Terry, exquisitely cringe-making, Rosemary’s received calls from Lucy’s husband, as Lucy isn’t answering. She even offers the number. There’s a gear-change as Lucy infantilises the couple: they shift from thinking her mad to regressive, scolded children being made to apologise, drink milk, squabble. There’s a pay-off. This is a superbly-poised opener.
Suzanne Heritage, Kirilly Long, Myles Locke
Drinking Companion
Neil Drew’s Harry has been portrayed with more nuance, but when you hear the lines you wonder why he’s not been seen as Drew’s Dell-wide-Boy before. Drew is horribly relentless. Chloe McEwan’s perfumier Paula is slowly persuaded to at least enjoy a free drink, though she has no intention of satisfying Harry’s increasingly unsubtle protestations of “respect”.
Long returns as harder-headed Bernice: though even Bernice accepts a drink. There’s little time for the women to establish separate lives when alone: McEwen and Long seize them eloquently enough to make you realise the 70s are littered with women-traps. It’s clear Paula and Bernice have motives for not running off impromptu.
There is though a fourth character. Director of two other plays Ann Atkins sparkles as put-upon Waitress with a trick up her blouse.
Chloe McEwan, Neil Drew
Ann Atkins
Between Mouthfuls
Two bad-tempered couples arrive at the same hotel’s restaurant. What could go right? Bill Griffiths’ Waiter might have the last gesture, and enjoys a touch of physical theatre literally juggling glasses. Mike skinner’s superb older CEO and councillor Pearce is taking his reluctant wife (Suzanne Heritage almost unrecognisable from her Rosemary role) after his work-out in Rome. She’s suspicious and Heritage builds this beautifully, counterpointing Skinner’s uncannily realised relic.
Mike Skinnner, Suzanne Heritage
Unseen nearby, his junior Martin (Morgan Corby, in an exquisitely observed performance) persuades reluctant wife Polly (Chloe McEwan again, now wryly middle-class) to stay. Discomfited by seeing the Pearces. Pearce and Polly echo characters in Absurd Person Singular, Polly’s more angry than desperate, enjoying autonomy
Timing here is a serious comic business and it’s exquisitely observed, down to Martin’s actual priorities when confronted.
Chloe McEwan, Morgan Corby
Bill Grifiths
Gosforth’s Fete
Steven Adams as the eponymous cad anneals this sticky day, as a fund-raising fete sinks under rain, egos, wiring and a pack of offstage feral Wolf Cubs. Adams has pitched the tent round the set with exits and various noises off where Beverley Grover’s sound design comes into its own. It’s a set-piece with so many moving gags you think something might short-circuit. It’s understandable Sitko goes for vivid caricature here, though there are other possibilities.
Adams’ Gosforth is the last Ayckbourn monster here. Adams plays up the horrible confidence though not control-freakery of his ever-revised itinerary: he’s a kind of Hopcroft, ambitious anti-hero of Absurd Person Singular of the previous year. Chloe McEwen returns as Milly, spinster schoolteacher long engaged to scoutmaster Stewart (Bradley Coffey), but clearly finding consolation, with two reasons to regret it.
Chloe McEwan, Steven Adams
Suzanne Heritage’s Mrs Pearce returns, substituting for her husband. At first pompous grand dame, she’s subjected to humiliating accidents even before giving her scheduled speech; there’s mishaps awaiting everyone as rain falls, electricity trips, people fall.
Caroline Lambe’s Vicar twitters with helpless amelioration. Coffey’s entrance after something is unexpectedly broadcast – the great moment of Confusions – is a bit lost as he enters on a period Spacehopper. “You bastard Gosforth” is muffled though this will improve. The excellent Coffey, whom we see too rarely since he began to excel backstage, portrays a sad, diminutive man-child whose loss of virginity is more alcoholic than sexual. The farce is riotous.
Bradley Coffey, Caroline Lambe
A hugely welcome fete of its own, with a few rugged caricatures, there’s subtlety too in this production: Long, Skinner and Corby excel, but there’s superb work elsewhere, not least the way Adams literally holds the Fete’s footlights together. Admixed with an odd choice or two, BLT revival still triumphs.
Bradley Coffey, Steven Adams
Directed by Ann Atkins (Mother Figure and Between Mouthfuls), Tina Sitko (Drinking Companion and Gosforth’s Fete)
Stage Manager Claire Prater, ASM/Props Janet White
Set Design and Construction Steven Adams, Set Construction & Painting the Cast and Crew, Set Painting Tom Williams
Lighting and Sound Design, Beverley Grover Lighting and Sound Operation Tina Sitko, Costumes Myles Locke, Production Photography Miles Davies
Bradley Coffey, Chloe McEwan