An Ayckbourn Premiere In Your Own Home

Ahead of Alan Ayckbourn, before Covid came most untimely upon its hour, was his usual busy summer season at the SJT Theatre, in Scarborough. He was directing the world première of his latest play, Truth Will Out, and reviving Just Between Ourselves, from 1976. When this obviously couldn’t happen, the ever-inventive playwright found a trick up his sleeve. And the theatre, of which he was Artistic Director for 37 years until retiring in 2009, got its première after all, in Anno Domino, an audio drama.

56 years after his last appearance on a professional stage, the 81-year-old Olivier and Tony Award-winning author treads the virtual boards in the company of his wife, Heather Stoney, whose last full season as an actress was at the SJT, in 1985, appearing in Ayckbourn’s Woman in Mind.

It’s the first time they’ve acted together since Sir Alan’s last appearance on a professional stage, in William Gibson’s two-hander, Two for the Seesaw, at the Rotherham Civic Theatre in 1964.

Essentially radio drama, it demands a good deal from two actors required to take eight parts, whose ages range from 17 to 70. No the least of their achievements is to bring out a range of registers and accents from posh to Cockney, with a north country one thrown in for good measure. It also makes full use of radio drama’s ability to cut elliptically - like film - from one scene to another and back again in a way that would be impossible on stage. The author was, of course, for many years a radio drama producer and it shows.

Like several of Ayckbourn’s plays the occasion is a family anniversary. The scene is set on a Saturday evening with Sam and Milly about to leave for their silver wedding anniversary celebration at a local bistro. It’s obviously supposed to be a happy occasion but their exchanges do hint at a certain strain. We little guess for some time, however, just how badly things have deteriorated between them and, in the meantime, there is much of what will later emerge as a rather cruel dramatic irony, the celebration of a long marriage coinciding with the announcement of its break-up.

We cut across to Sam’s parents, making similar preparations to be there, the old and forgetful Ben, gruff of voice and bumbling in manner, having to be reminded by Ella it is customary to wear trousers at such times. Sam’s sister, Martha and her new partner, Craig, are also invited and she is worried about leaving behind her son, Raymond - who calls himself Raz and is not wanting to go. She also has some kind of dread of these family occasions, which strikes an ominous note, for her in particular and her family in general. The Cockney accent belongs to young Cinny, trainee deputy manager of the restaurant, trying to hold it all together with staff members calling in sick, the first hint, perhaps, Covid might be about to strike.

We are spared the dinner itself and learn from the aged parents of their shock at the fell announcement, not least in the strangeness, as they see, of the need to separate when neither party is involved in an affair. The older generation genuinely don’t understand issues of incompatibility as reason for divorce, reminding us of Ben’s earlier comment that once the first 25 years are over, it’s a question of just holding on to the bitter end.

To Ella it’s just a nonsense. They are agreed it is simply not English, just one manifestation of an old-world casual racism that prompts her to wonder if Milly might have some foreign blood in her. Some of their other naiveties are rather more humorous. Ella’s choice of whose initial should go first on the silver bowl, presented in honour of the occasion - because to go with M & S might have been misinterpreted whereas S and M wouldn’t - is one of several genuinely funny moments.

Undoubtedly, the central sober message of the play is that in a rapidly changing world with young people increasingly not staying together in relationships, the sudden separation of a couple who after so long together were naturally presumed to represent the old established norm, the bedrock of society, is particularly unsettling, especially for close relatives beset with their own emotional problems.

If Ella is made very angry by it, Martha is devastated. For her it brings back memories of her own recent divorce from which, we can see, she suffered psychological damage. Irrationally, she takes it out on the well-meaning Craig. A major surprise is an emerging relationship, facilitated by text, between the youngsters, Cinny and Raz, but not perhaps as great as the bombshell dropped by Ben, his eyes suddenly opened to possibilities of which he had never dreamed. There will be revelations.

This is another intriguing play off the seemingly endless Ayckbourn reel. It asks more questions than it answers and leaves us, as always, not quite certain when to experience sadness, when to smile reflectively, when to shrug. It’s a reflection of a human condition, these yoking and pairings, loose links, strong bonds and close consanguinities, collectively making up life’s strange web of relationships, endlessly interconnecting, conjoining and suddenly snapping. Lockdown clamps people together unwontedly, even unnaturally, submitting these relationships to the severest of tests.

But as ever a rose is a rose is rose, even if it is an Anno Domino rose. If this comment doesn’t make much sense, you’ll have to listen to the play. What an opportunity in these strange times to be part of an Ayckbourn première, hear for the first time the master not only directing his own work but acting in it.

Not to be missed. Sir Alan has done his best in a wry sort of way to keep our spirits up.

Anno Domino is freely available on the SJT website (www.sjt.uk.com) until noon on Thursday 25 June.