Absurdly Entertaining

Alan Ayckbourn has long been a playwright the self- flattering classes ostentatiously dislike.

His lack of pretension and his accessibility has seen him labelled as a kind of Tom Stoppard for tabloid readers. But what this 1972 work shows is how politically prescient this most underrated of writers can be.

Three drinks parties are hosted by recognisable social types over three successive years. First the superlative Jane Horrocks’ Jane Hopcroft and her reptilian tradesman husband (David Bamber) nervously prepare to entertain their social “superiors”.

Ronald, the upper class banker (David Horovitch) and his gin-addled wife, Marion (Jenny Seagrove) find it impossible to avoid patronising their hosts. Jane ends up locked in the garden, as she attempts to avoid embarrassing her husband with her sou’wester and mac ensemble. And in a lovely touch, Ronald mistakes her for a tradesman.

Meanwhile, Lia Williams’ dippy Eva and John Gordon Sinclair’s philandering architect, Geoffrey, are cut from more bohemian cloth. The next scene takes place in their elegantly scruffy kitchen, as Geoff's forsaken wife tries out a variety of suicide techniques. The pitch black humour comes from her uncomprehending guests and their accidental thwarting of each subsequent attempt.

The concluding scene unfurls in Ronald and Marion’s gothic-arched but freezing kitchen, where the ursinely insensitive banker is muffled up like some confused exhibit from a bygone age. As he tries to comfort his failed architect friend, the now thriving Hopcrofts descend upon their less than welcoming hosts.

These proto-Thatcherites may be greedy and vulgar but they are a rising class. The etiolated professional classes can only look on in envy.

Interestingly, all the couples share one characteristic: the smug self-obsession of the husbands. And whether the wives respond to their situation by attempted suicide, alcoholism, or compulsive cleaning, they are all trapped in lifeless marriages.