Roundelay (Stephen Joseph Theatre)

In a way, this can only be a sort of provisional review of Roundelay. The full richness of the work (or lack of richness – it’s difficult to tell from one performance) can be gauged only by seeing more of the variations: the number of possibilities far exceeds the number of performances!

For Alan Ayckbourn is up to his tricks again! Five plays are performed in random order – chosen by members of the audience before the start. All plays interconnect, but in a loosely overlapping way. Typically a character might be in two of the plays, but in different company so that an ingenious web of circumstance links all the characters and their stories, though none are aware of all the others! I am reluctant to hint at the plot(s) lest I spoil surprises: suffice it to say that a retired judge, an MP, an aspiring teenaged stage star, a call girl, a self-published novelist, a would-be theatrical agent, a low-level hoodlum and a vicar play their parts.

Since Mr. A delights in amazing us, he will probably be pleased that my first thoughts in this review took the form of questions. How differently would we interpret a play if we had seen it after, rather than before, another? Does the same incident work better as irony or drama? More specifically, did The Star have more emotional depth than the others because it came fourth and built on events and characters already seen or simply because it focussed on Russ, the most fully rounded of the characters? Would it have seemed different if we had already seen the farcically death-defying scene of another principal?

Roundelay impresses as the work of a formidably adventurous playwright, not content with cosy slipperdom in his 78th play, but it is not his most theatrically successful work. The shifts in tone are typical Ayckbourn: generally the plays are fairly realistic, but we have a sudden supernatural episode, and he can switch from pathos to farce and back with ease. However, the farce of The Politician is more sit-com predictable than is usual with Ayckbourn.

The main problem is that Roundelay is too long, just over 3 hours including a 100-minute first half. The fact that the order is random makes for more exposition than is usual – the playwright never knows what the audience has been told.

Richard Stacey excels as a do-gooding vicar who is anything but the typical do-gooder; Krystie Hylton produces a tour de force of mammoth sulks and over-the-top theatricality; Nigel Hastings makes the most of two one-play-only caricatures; but Ayckbourn gets good performances from all the cast of eight. The music is delightful and the colour-coded sets and scene changes fit the sly wit of the evening.

Roundelay continues at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough until 4 October 2014 before moving to the New Vic Theatre on 7 October.