Theatre in Review: A Brief History of Women (Stephen Joseph Theatre/59E59)"Houses. They never forget you." So says an elderly, wheelchair-bound lady surveying the manor house where, several lifetimes ago, she was terribly unhappy. This particular house has plenty to remember, as it has been dreamed up by Alan Ayckbourn, who has imagined its ever-changing history across six decades; indeed, its one constant is the unremarkable man whose life is inextricably tied up with it in its many incarnations. The title of A Brief History of Women is something of a misnomer. There are many women in the play, but they come go. Only Ayckbourn's protagonist, the unhappily named Spates, and the building known as Kirkbridge Manor remain. It begins at an engagement party in 1925, but don't expect Downton Abbey-style romance. A jazz band is rattling away at earsplitting levels, and Lady Caroline Kirkbridge, the hostess, is woozy from too many servings of a cocktail known as The Bee's Knees. The affianced couple being celebrated are Lady Cynthia, her daughter, and Captain Fergus Ffluke; at the moment, Fergus is holed up in the study with Lord Edward Kirkbridge, a mean, stingy, hateful old bugger, his humor not improved by the fact that he moves through life permanently pickled. Fergus patiently listens as he pours out his contempt for the lower orders, lowered standards, and (worst of all) the Labour Party. Meanwhile, in the ballroom, Lady Cynthia is panicking over her fiance's absence, and Lady Caroline is bleakly contemplating her future: "Life, just at present, is simply a huge question mark," she says. "Everything's so in the melting pot, don't you feel?" Little does she know: Before the evening is over, terrible words will be exchanged, a death will occur, the impending marriage will be imperiled, and Lady Caroline will have made a brief romantic connection to Spates, the son of a local farmer who occasionally jobs in as a butler. This scene is a tart little comedy and prime Ayckbourn. Even in the middle of such tumultuous events, Lady Caroline remains unshakably optimistic, telling Spates, "Now that we're through that terrible war, the future's bright, my dear. I truly believe that. It's especially bright for young people like yourself. The ones with this whole twentieth century stretching out before them." And off we go. In 1945, Kirkbridge has become a posh girls' school with an unreliable heating system. Spates, now educated and a faculty member, is caught in a complicated romance with Ursula, a history teacher who alternately wants to bed him on the spot and go into permanent mourning for her fiance, who died in the war. It unfolds on Guy Fawkes Day and added to this tinderbox romance is a display of real fireworks, which rings down the curtain with a comically horrible death. In 1965, Kirkbridge has become an arts center, overseen by Spates, where the local theatre company, which is riddled with conflicts and infidelities, is attempting to rehearse a panto about Jack and the Beanstalk. The final episode takes us to 1985, when Kirkbridge is now a popular hotel, and Spates, the retired manager who hangs about, has a brief encounter with a ghost from his past. It's no secret that Ayckbourn's comedies have grown increasingly darker over the years, but it's hard to think of one so autumnal and tinged with regret as A Brief History of Women. I wouldn't call it one of his first-rank works -- the scenes, especially the alternately farcical and macabre girls' school sequence, are too uneven for that -- but, overall, this is an unusual and compelling work that makes use of an almost novelistic structure to neatly encapsulate half a century of social upheaval before concluding on a surprisingly moving note. Antony Eden's Spates is a finely rendered Ayckbourn hero, meaning he is feckless and forever caught up in other people's emotional storms. In one of the more amusing moments, the young Spates, tightly clutching his drinks tray, stands stock still while Lady Caroline and Lord Edward savage each other. He deftly handles a bit of sex farce as Spates, the teacher, getting caught in a compromising position -- pants down and all -- in front of the student body. He subtly indicates his growing attraction to a married woman in the 1965 sequence, and he does wonders with a throwaway line, in the next scene, that reveals what happened between them. It's a fine case of underplaying that achieves well-honed emotional results. Ayckbourn has assembled a cast of his regulars, all of whom know the territory. As the venomous Lord Kirkbridge and the priggish headmaster, Russell Dixon adopts strange drawling accents that make his lines hard to understand, but he all but highjacks the third episode as the panto's director, who has cast himself in the dame role. The sight of the burly actor, draped in a skirt and sporting an enormous cone bra, vamping his way through a naughty little music hall number ("If you're looking to drive me crazy/And to tickle my whoopsydaisy/I'm never that kind of girl/But you could try") is the production's purest bit of fun. Frances Marshall is poignant as Lady Caroline, briefing the young Spates on the "secret social code" that has left her miserable, and as the supercilious leading lady of Jack and the Beanstalk. Laura Matthews is solid as the hysterical Ursula, who sees visions of her dead lover, and as the most unenthusiastic stage manager in theatre history. Laurence Pears amuses as the school's loutish gym teacher and as a sullen lad who, rather than say his lines, prefers to deconstruct Jack and the Beanstalk as a text of class oppression. Louise Shuttleworth is fine as a mother who swiftly moves to cancel an engagement when she realizes the bride's dowry isn't forthcoming and as one of the unhappily married women who turn to Spates. Kevin Jenkins has provided a cleverly laid out set depicting four separate rooms in the manor and Jason Taylor's lighting mixes warm and cool tones as needed. Jenkins' costumes sometimes look a tad caricatured and the production features a notably bad set of wigs. Simon Slater's original music strikes the right melancholy tone; no sound design is credited, which is odd, since there are so many effects. Even as he approaches eighty, with eighty-one plays on his resume, Ayckbourn continues to find inventive ways to express his themes. The chronicle structure of A Brief History of Women allows him to create episodes that, at their best, are incisive and economical while fitting into a larger framework. There has always been a melancholy undertow to his plays, but Spates' ultimate encounter with a visitor from his past can bring one to the end of years. This is an imperfect play, but it's the work of an artist who, in his eighth decade, is still growing -- David Barbour 
|
