Absurd Person Singular

Play (1972)
by Alan Ayckbourn

With Samantha Evans (Jane), David Berger-Jones (Sidney), Steve Barkhimer (Ronald), Stephanie Clayman (Marion), Liz Hayes (eVa), Bill Mootos (Geoffrey)

Three successive Christmases take place in the kitchens of three socially connected couples. The first is set in the nervously appointed household of Sidney and Jane who are desperate to find their way in and up. The second occurs in that of Geoffrey and Eva who have brought the art of bone picking to its dire consequences. And the third is chez Ronald and Marion, who set out as the most mature and accomplished and who find themselves suddenly peering out over more complex personal and social landscapes.

Social stratification seems unerringly constant until, of course, it does not. All great histories, and farces, reveal the grand illusion of its apparent permanence. Ayckbourn’s genius in Absurd Person Singular is his capacity to condense this observation into a triptych of ridiculous gestures that, in their caricature-like histrionics, express the unerring shapes of mutable social existence.

The second of the three acts is by far the most extreme and ludicrous, and its wit lies in its insistence on social blindness. Characters come and go without seeing the most obvious things while relentlessly pursuing their own narrow ends. Wild, hysterical and very broad, it leads one to wonder whether this is a British comedy of manners or a bizarre take on Beckett’s Endgame. In fact, there wind up being vivid staging resemblances between them.

How Ayckbourn manages to make one laugh so heartily at the action and to weep so subtly at the subtext is quite amazing. Whether Jane (Samantha Evans) is obsessively cleaning an oven, Ronald (Steve Barkhimer) is trying ineptly to fix a light fixture, or Marion (Stephanie Clayman) is lavishly anointing herself with bug spray, the hysterics continue. But these people, while ridiculous, suffer before our eyes and we feel for as well as laugh at them.

Ayckbourn also makes us ache generically for humankind. Faced with holiday and celebration, all it can do is suffer indignities. When it does rise up from its last knockdown to sing, there is a feeling for the whole sad human chorus. In the midst of degradation how laughable it is that it sings so trivially, and yet how fabulous that it wants to sing at all.

The directorial expertise of this production cannot be overstated. Daniel Gidron has shown his talents in multiple productions at the Central Square Theater, recently in last season’s superb drama The How And The Why. The current farcical outing is an exquisitely tuned interplay of grunts, gestures and declamations and shows off Gidron’s considerable capacity for humor, reaffirming his versatility.

The initial setting of this play calls to mind the great Michael Frayn farce Noises Off (1982) which shows the backstage goings-on during a theatrical production that goes awry. Here, the action is in the kitchens of the three houses, away, at first, from what seems to be going on in the main social rooms. As the play progresses, however, one sees that what goes on in the kitchen comes to have the most import. Social deference finally gives in to the absurd and personal, and, by the third act, the events in formal social space diminish to almost nothing.

The acting is good all around.

Steve Barkhimer (Ronald) is a great comic actor with a noted capacity to be broadly clown-like. Here, he brings together a perfect combination of jawed restraint, upper-lipped tension and barely contained slapstick. He is deftly suited to play an English gentleman, without the humor. In this role, he draws a snooty banker’s character and embellishes it with hilarity. The series of jiggles and quakes that follow upon his ill-fated electrical repair adventure in the second act is a marvel, constrained yet undermined, like William Buckley on acid.

David Berger-Jones (Sidney) and Samantha Evans (Jane) make an excellently high strung couple on the way up. Evans makes Jane into a cleaning fiend and does it with a magnetically engaging smile and diligently optimistic demeanor. Berger-Jones provides Sidney with a ridiculous dosage of smarminess and officiousness and still makes him adorable.

Liz Hayes (Eva) has to carry a whole act without speaking, which she does very well, considering the challenges. One of the great mysteries of the play is how Eva gets where she is in Act II to where she is in Act III, and I’m not sure any actress could fill in the blanks that Ayckbourn leaves open. He’s writing farce, not drama, so the space just remains. When Hayes has to return in Act III to speak once again, she does so convincingly, though we do not know exactly what has happened to her character.

Stephanie Clayman (Marian) makes a hilariously supercilious turn as an elevated lady inspecting kitchen cabinets and then adorning herself with bug spray.

Bill Mootos (Geoffrey) delivers the blithely sadistic lines to his wife, Eva, with exquisite unfeeling at the opening of Act II, winding up the clock that will jangle and explode as that act develops.

The play is performed with nicely figured English accents, convincing, but not overdone. Kudos to Erika Bailey, the dialect coach, who obviously oversaw and shaped these results most capably.

– BADMan