Friday March 29, 2024
Private Fears in Public Places
Review

Private Fears in Public Places

March 26 2007

Private Fears in Public Places, Alan Ayckbourn's 67th play, was first staged in his Scarborough home town, home theatre in 2004. It was well received and played a return season a year later before transferring to a near-London theatre (Richmond) then going on to a New York triumph - for a month - in a festival titled "Brits Off Broadway." So far so good.

Ayckbourn has had some mixed fortune in recent years but remains the UK's most successful and performed living playwright. Private Fears was said, by the critics, to be a return to form. It's certainly a return to his favourite style: simultaneous and overlapping stories and characters. In this instance, six youngish Londoners interact - or don't - in more than 50 scenes and stories way too complicated to explain here. It's a glorious sleight-of-hand technique that Ayckbourn used to pull off brilliantly (think The Norman Conquests) and seems to have successfully returned to - if press reports including a rave review in the New York Times - are to be believed. But it's a difficult form and one which fails miserably when not performed with barrowloads of conviction, skill and pace.

This production, touring from Queensland Theatre Company, with company artistic director Michael Gow directing, is the Australian premiere of the play and a deeply unfortunate one it is too. It's first stop post-Brisbane is Glen Street Theatre and on opening night the production displayed little conviction, not a lot of skill and almost no pace.

The cast seemed preoccupied with atrocious English accents and "being funny" - rather than being grounded in their roles and allowing the comedy to arise from some self belief. Paul Bishop is most successful at pulling together the elements of Englishness and bittersweet, pacy comedy, but that isn't saying much. By and large the rest spend most of their time stumbling over or mangling their lines, while the women tend to shriek. Some of the worst "drunk" acting ever is gathered here in one place at one time and, although each actor has an occasional sparkling moment, the whole is a dreary mishmash of missed chances and misbegotten playing.

Private Fears in Public Places

The set, lighting and costumes are drab and all in all, it's impossible to recommend the one hour and 50 minutes required to see it through. Nobody involved in this production seems to have a clue how to play Ayckbourn comedy and the result - even on a normally excitable opening night - was close to two hours of silence and the occasional polite or hopeful titter. Deary me.

Private Fears in Public Places, Glen St Theatre to March 31 then touring, ph: (02) 9975 1455 or www.glenstreet.com.au

 

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