Laughter and tears from ‘Absent Friends’

THAME Players are to stage a new production of Absent Friends, one of the most revealing comedies written by Sir Alan Ayckbourn, inspired by an episode in his own life.

Thame Players in rehearsal (left to right) Katie Els, Josh Rush, Anne Lankester, Judith Rogers, Kevin Batch, with Adam Hurst (sitting)

First performed in 1974, the idea for the play came to the award-winning playwright when he attended a tea party for a woman whose husband had died during their honeymoon. Absent Friends has been described as a work of ‘ruthless simplicity’, driven entirely by the actions of six people in a living room.

The play takes place in the home of Diana and Paul, old friends of the recently bereaved Colin. Diana decides to hold a tea party, gathering together with old friends John and Evelyn, Gordon and Marge, to cheer Colin up. But there are deep problems, involving suspected extra-marital relationships, of which Colin, the ‘absent friend’, is mostly unaware. Just as matters threaten to erupt between these friends, Colin arrives and everyone awkwardly tries to be nice to him, while attempting to get on with each other. Despite his loss, Colin is blissfully happy in the memory of the time he spent with his fiancée. As he leafs through the photograph albums he has brought with him and rhapsodises over his dead fiancée, the fault lines in his friends’ lives open up like chasms. His apparent satisfaction with his own life highlights the depths to which his friends have sunk, and his attempts to sort out their problems merely creates further rifts in the others’ relationships.

The action moves from clever humour to excruciating embarrassment in an instant and, as the critic Harold Hobson noted, ‘If it is the saddest and most moving thing Ayckbourn has written, it is also the most clear-sighted and the funniest’.

Brian Holt, directing for Thame Players, said: “We’re delighted to be performing one of the best plays by the most prolific dramatist of our times. Absent Friends superbly demonstrates Ayckbourn’s craftsmanship and acute social observation, with laughter and tears in equal measure.”

Absent Friends – Thame Players Theatre, Nelson Street, Thame OX9 2DP – Tuesday May 9, to Saturday, May 13, at 7.45pm

SOURCE: Contributed

NB Parts of this review are copyright: Simon Murgatroyd, reproduced with permission from www.alanayckbourn.net