Why Alan Ayckbourn should be theater's go-to guy
By Mark Collins, Camera Theater Critic
Thursday, March 8, 2007
From left, Vonalda Utterback, Arnie Follendorf and Jane Allard Gray star in “Woman in Mind" at Theater Company of Lafayette.
LAFAYETTE — Here's a plea to decision makers at local community theaters: The next time you're perusing the script of a Neil Simon play because you're considering adding it to your theater's approaching season, put it aside.
Instead, grab hold of one of the 70 plays Alan Ayckbourn has written and give your audiences, dare I say, a better night of laughs than they would have with yet another version of Simon's "Rumors" or "The Odd Couple."
Simon, the American, and Ayckbourn, the Brit, are often compared for three reasons: They've both been ridiculously prolific writers, both have the gift of creating funny characters and dialogue and both get the label "most produced playwright after Shakespeare," depending on who you're talking to.
But while Simon is the punchline master, Ayckbourn draws his humor out of the darker dysfunctions in the human experience. Simon is a sentimentalist. Ayckbourn, much less so.
Around here, it seems Simon is the more produced of the two. But Exhibit A in why Ayckbourn deserves even more play than he gets locally is the Theater Company of Lafayette's fine production of Ayckbourn's 1985 "Woman in Mind."
Under Jackie Tisinai's direction, the production shows off Ayckbourn's knack for writing interesting characters, who spin witty dialogue on top of something more serious than what first meets the eye. This is a comedy, for sure. But this time that means it's a very funny play with a serious undercurrent and a downright sobering ending.
Tisinai's first good move as director is in her choice of cast. Each of the eight actors has created detailed, authentic characters, and each delivers a fine performance.
Front and center are Jane Allard Gray, as Susan; James Walker, as Dr. Bill Windsor; and Arnie Follendorf, as Gerald, Susan's husband. Unlike in Simon's plays, where the jokes are obviously set up in the lines for the actors to come and punch them down, Ayckbourn's comedy is underneath and around the lines. The humor is not as simple to flesh out, but when accomplished — as the TCL cast has done — it's wonderful stuff.
"Woman in Mind" is one of those plays where the less you know about it going in, the better. But it's not giving too much away to say the story centers around Gray's character. Susan is a middle-aged, middle-class English woman who's in a dull, unhappy marriage.
We first meet her after she's fainted in her English garden, where all the play's action takes place. We soon come to realize Susan lives in two different worlds.
Ayckbourn uses a unique convention, one where the audience sees and hears both of Susan's worlds, even though the characters in the two different worlds don't always connect with each other. It allows us a deeper glimpse into Susan's mental state, which goes from whimsically off to anguished in the course of two-and-a-half hours.
By the end, Ayckbourn turns the stage into a farcical Freudian nightmare, only to ratchet the stakes up much higher in the final moment, which the TCL production handles quite well.
The handiwork of designers Brian Miller (lights, co-scenic) and Sarah Spencer (co-scenic) aid the moment's power. It's a minor miracle, as, using just a scrim and effective light plot, they've turned the cramped quarters on the Mary Miller stage into something that bolsters what the actors are doing in the powerful ending.
In an instant, an evening's worth of chuckles and guffaws turn to gasps. Which is altogether more satisfying than another punchline.
Contact Camera Theater Critic Mark Collins at (303) 473-1369 or bdctheater@comcast.net.