Intimate Exchanges

Play (1983)
by Alan Ayckbourn

With Sarah Elizabeth Bedard (Sylvie, Celia), Jade Ziane (Lionel, Toby, Joe)

The amazing thing about this theatrical construction by the great Alan Ayckbourn is that it’s a bit like roulette. It has many possible pieces and paths to completion. Putting together a whole array of them, Ayckbourn has constructed, in effect, a collage kit for a play that results, to some extent, in the decisions made about how to perform it.

In the current Central Square run, the talented director Olivia D’Ambrosio (also the artistic director of Boston’s Bridge Repertory Theatre), has selected a subset of four possible paths out of the sixteen or so provided by Ayckbourn. At half of the performances, the character of Sylvie is emphasized and at half of them the character of Celia becomes the focus. And, within each of those separate performances, the audience, during intermission, gets to vote on which of two additional possible forks the performance should take. It’s a brilliant way to pare down Ayckbourn’s gorilla of a play while still preserving its happenstance character.

The list of characters in this brilliantly written and highly inventive comedy – at least for the performance I saw – includes the middle-aged Toby Teasdale, a headmaster of a private school, Celia Teasdale, his frustrated wife, Lionel Hepplewick, the caretaker at the school, Sylvie Bell, the Teasdale’s home helper, and Joe Hepplewick, Lionel aged father. All the characters are played by two actors, Sarah Elizabeth Bedard and Jade Ziane, brilliantly and effectively.

The plot – again for this performance I saw – focuses on Sylvie, her romance with Lionel, her scholarly tutorials with Toby and corresponding affection for him and the effects this might have upon the relationship between Toby and Celia. It doesn’t sound like much, but it really is. Ayckbourn’s writing is stunning here – it grows on one with durable force and seductiveness. It all appears to be in ordinary language and about ordinary things, but somehow Ayckbourn’s magic weaves a carpet that transports one into areas of vulnerability that one barely expects. To watch Lionel gamely court Sylvie while responding to Celia’s suggestive approaches is heartbreaking, but also engagingly complex. To see Sylvie and Toby develop an unexpected attachment, as well, exhibits poignancy without melodrama. Throughout Ayckbourn manages to develop just enough disruption to generate interest, while not overdoing it.

Ayckbourn has the incredible ability to weave these networks of superficially simple plots in a way that tightens the harnesses around an array of ordinary characters and does it so deftly that one does not realize how tender and probing the results are. That was clear in the recent, very good, production of Bedroom Farce at the Huntington Theatre, and perhaps even more vividly apparent in the current product at the Central Square Theater.

Truly amazing is what D’Ambrosio and her two actors have pulled out of this production, conveying, with utter conviction, the varied array of characters and possible interactions between them.

Though I glanced at the program beforehand and thought that there were only two actors, one male and one female, I somewhat cluelessly did not actually register that Sarah Elizabeth Bedard was playing both of the principal female roles until after the performance. Now that is convincing acting! Stunningly different in both roles as Sylvie and as Celia and equally convincing in both, it did not even dawn on me that both characters were not on stage at the same time. Part of that is the ingenuity of Ayckbourn’s writing, but a good part of it as well is the utterly convincing staging and quality of the performances.

Equally convincing in three different roles is Jade Ziane, who shifts between Toby Teasdale, Lionel Hepplewick and Joe Hepplewick, with grace and complete conviction. He is so totally immersed in each of these roles that a mere walk offstage and a change of costume bring forth a magic transformation. He cuts between the young and physical Lionel to the old, stuffy Toby with swiftness and immense grounding in each character. Joe Hepplewick has a smaller role, but, again, Ziane puts forward a different form of aged character with his own charms and curiosities and does it totally convincingly. He projects a real magnetism in these roles, whether young or old, and makes the stage shine with each of them.

Olivia D’Ambrosio’s direction here is really stunning. She demonstrates, as she has done in Bridge Repertory Theatre productions and elsewhere, a capacity to direct actors with just enough heightening of the prominent lines in their roles to make a strong dramatic impression. In this play, which relies significantly on a small element of caricature to enable the two actors to distinguish their multiple characters, she is right in her element.

Having seen the Sylvie option, I’m now tempted to go back and see the Celia option and also to see what chance does to the other plotlines. That urge is an indication of the seductive quality of this wonderful production, and of this brilliantly written and touching comedy of manners.

– BADMan