Chris Eldon Lee reviews “Arrivals and Departures” which is in repertoire at The New Vic Theatre in Newcastle-Under-Lyme until Sat 26th October
I’m writing this in a state of shock and awe.
How can a man, creating his 77th play, still be so imaginatively inventive and outrageously original? Alan Ayckbourn, the master of chronology, is confounding the passage of time itself by coming up with his best new play in aeons.
For once the temporal device he employs on stage is merely flash back. But, no, that would be too, too simple! So we get two sets of flashbacks exquisitely illuminating the life histories of two characters with nothing in common, who suffer the almost annual Ayckbourn fate of being thrown together in extreme circumstances.
In this case it’s Private Ez Swain, aged 23, who’s part of a hit squad sent to a railway station to apprehend a dangerous terrorist due to arrive on the next train. She’s detailed to ‘mind’ grey-haired Barry, a Yorkshire traffic warden who Ayckbourn manages to turn into the only man in Britain who can recognise the suspect.
There’s a lot of hilarious hullabaloo as the officers in disguise rehearse the ridiculous apprehension scenario, whilst Ez and Barry are ordered to ‘merge’ into a plausible low profile partnership. Barry suggests they play father and daughter…an idea that haunts the play henceforth.
Barry is played with superbly irritating comedy ticks by the cherubic Kim Wall. He has the relentlessly banal good humour of a cheeky chappie clubroom comic; endlessly rabbiting on to no great purpose. He’s affable enough, but you wouldn’t want to sit next to him on a train. In his baseball cap and Hush Puppies, Wall inhabits Barry like the kapok in a cuddly toy. It’s a master class in characterisation. Once you warm to him, he sets helpless giggles running round your whole body. And then he stops your heart with his hangdog disappointments. I couldn’t take my eyes of him.
Barry soon decides his mission is to make Ez smile. This taciturn, professional soldier is equally hypnotically played by Elizabeth Boag; as if she’s just stepped out of a fridge. Her soul has been destroyed and her life is empty but for the motions of army operations. She’s suffered loss and abuse and, like us, struggles to relate to Barry – till it gets to the point where she can’t help herself. It’s her back-story scenes that give Boag the legs to display her full range of acting talent, and the chalk-and-cheese leads compliment each other exceedingly well.
The rest of the characters are a cavalcade of arriving and departing cameos, performed by a cast so flexible they were doing another play altogether the previous night. Their ability to ‘be’ somebody memorable for just a few minutes is a joy to behold and, in a evening that becomes increasingly poignant, you are grateful for the belly laughs.
When the interval arrived I confess I was baffled. The story seemed almost over and I had no idea whatsoever what was going to happen next. To be fair to the company, I must leave you in a similar state. Let me just say that in the second half Ayckbourn proves once and for all that you can make the same gags work twice; and when Barry and Ez do finally ‘merge’, it’s so achingly beautiful, I openly wept.
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Photo by Tony Burrows