Absurd Person Singular, review: Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne, February 25-29

Cocktail parties, social climbing and garish orange and green kitchens – the images flood back at the Devonshire Park Theatre this week, where London Classic Theatre re-create Ayckbourn’s Absurd Person Singular.

Timeless comedy, or locked in a 1970s time-cell? Universal observation of human nature, or stereotypes? Alan Ayckbourn remains our finest living playwright, certainly our most prolific, and any scepticism is close to heresy.

There is a middle ground, though. This new revival from London Classic Theatre is faithful to the original, and the observation is sharp and amusing. The settings, characters and relationships are well remembered, and the acting is impeccable.

That orange and green kitchen absolutely shouts at the audience – although thankfully only for Act One of what is effectively a three-acter. The action, on three successive Christmas Eves, moves from home to home of the three couples, as their fabric of normality frays ever more destructively at the edges.

Simon Scullion’s design is technically excellent and highly effective, with swivelling reversible doors and panels transforming the set from one kitchen to the next. Sidney Hopcraft, ambitious small businessman, is entertaining his bank manager and a high-performing architect – all three with their spouses, of course.

Paul Sandys’ Sidney Hopcroft recovers from a disastrous night – largely sabotaged by neurotic wife Jane (the excellent Felicity Houlbrooke) – to climb that social ladder. By Act Two, social veneers are cracking: John Dorney’s womanising chauvinist Geoffrey Jackson is on the point of divorce and his wife Eva – a brilliant, alarmingly fragile Helen Keeley – is on the point of suicide. The comedy is at its blackest and there is real tension.

And then the denouement: a year on, Eva has recovered admirably but the third couple are gently crumbling. It is the turn of hapless bank manager Ronald Brewster-Wright and his sozzled spouse Marion (Graham O’Mara and Rosanna Miles) to implode, while the Hopcrofts pull the strings like puppet-masters. Splendid farce, with creasingly funny moments, and just a bit larger than life.

After Eastbourne, director Michael Cabot and his company take the show on an epic six-month UK tour. An accomplished, enjoyable night of theatre – and no harm in a dash of nostalgia. There is still life in those Ayckbourn classics.

A unique play set on Beachy Head: Beacons heads to Eastbourne. Click here to read more.