Improbable Fiction

Marlborough Theatre Group

Jim Hutchon was at Brentwood School

20thFebruary 2010

This latest Ayckbourn play is curious piece of work as there is little internal logic to the narrative. That said, coming from such a master pen, the result is a very funny and enjoyable scrutiny of personalities. The theme is a writer’s circle for writers who haven’t, and probably never will, finish their works. Chairman of the group (because he has the biggest house) is Arnold, played with slightly bemused efficiency by Martin Goldstone. Jess Bales is a forceful failed period romantic writer and farmer lesbian who gets some of the best of Ayckbourn’s acerbic humour, which she delivers with great comic timing. Children’s stories are the province of Grace Sims (Sheila Boar), and detective novels, the expertise of Vivvi, played with ebullience by Jackie Young. A withdrawn and hooded Clem is the sci-fi conspiracy expert, brought out in a darkly secret way by Graham Poultney. Brevis Winterton (Duncan Hopgood) is a blustering song writer with no lyrics and a weak bladder, and – sanest and most normal of all is the mother’s help, Ilsa, play by Louise Bridgeman.

After a typical Ayckbourn committee meeting of no consequence, but during which each of the authors gives an idea of their work in progress, the meeting breaks up. Then things kick off. For no apparent reason, the authors return as their inventions, and act out parts of their stories to the mystified Arnold. Ilsa becomes a murdering Victorian, Jess, a Jane Austen narrator, Brevis, an alien eliminator and – best transformation of all, Clem becomes an Edgar Wallace detective, with Vivvi as his ultra-sensitive bag carrier. There is further interchanging of roles, and it is clear that all the cast had a hugely enjoyable time chopping and changing. But all stayed strictly as convincing characters within whatever role they were playing, and despite lack of such things as plot or narrative drive, this was an evening of theatre to savour.