Private Fears in Public Places

Synopsis

"...my heart used to leap about and sing. It really did. At the thought of seeing you after two - three months. It did what they say it does. It literally leapt. But coming here to meet you today, it sort of sank. I'm sorry. It did..." Six people, six separate lives - yet all strangely linked by circumstance. Does Nicola still love Dan? Can Stewart be on the verge of an office romance? Will Imogen ever find true love? Does Ambrose have a secret life? And what on earth is Charlotte up to?

Our Review:

25 June 2009

A night on the sofa in front of the telly will never be quite the same again. For when you share your night on the sofa with a couple of hundred playgoers on the converted stage of Northampton’s Royal Theatre, it takes on a whole new dimension.

This second production in the company’s Alan Ayckbourn season to mark the playwright’s 70th birthday throws out the theatrical rule book in a bunch of different ways. Written in 2004 to a self-confessed filmic style, the play consists of 54 scenes in which the intertwined lives of six lonely people unravel to the point where only one relationship – a brother and sister – remains even remotely viable.

All of which makes it sound relentlessly miserable. It isn’t. Thanks to the intelligent crafting of its author, the barbed one-liners and the painful humanity at the heart of every character, there’s plenty of warmth and wit to offset the poignancy.

Artistic director Laurie Sansom – a one-time Ayckbourn apprentice at Scarborough – serves h...

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