RELATIVELY SPEAKING

This pitch-perfect ensemble piece makes a triumphant return
Sam-Taylor-176Never one to shy away from making light of our darker sides, Alan Ayckbourn is always best when playing with the lives of middleaged married couples. First premiered in Scarborough in 1965, Relatively Speaking is a classic example of Ayckbourn at his very best. A huge hit when it transferred to the West End in 1967, oddly, other than a few small-scale productions, it lay dormant until Lindsay Posner’s current revival.

Resisting the temptation to tweak the narrative for the contemporary ear, the play is a period masterpiece dressed in a set that now seems remarkably ‘on trend’, as interior designers are wont to say. Clearly one of the major draws is the chance to see the utterly irresistible Felicity Kendal at close range and be reminded that she still has one of the best pairs of legs in England. Casting her as the bewildered but beguiling Sheila was a masterstroke. True, she is playing a woman 20 years younger than the date on her birth certifi cate, but she pulls it off with aplomb.

Harder to believe is the idea that her husband, the portly Philip, brilliantly played by the glorious Jonathan Coy, is a man capable of persuading anyone, let alone a young woman as beautiful as Kara Tointon’s Ginny, into bed. But as this is the central conceit of the play, believe it we must. Besides, these things really do happen in real life. Young women lose their heads, and their hearts, to treacherous husbands.

Mercifully for the deluded Ginny, she wakes up and smells the coffee in the first scene, when faced with Max Bennett’s welltoned Greg, spread resplendent across her tiny bedsit. Admittedly it does take a while for her, and the play, to get going, and it is not until we leave the city for the clipped hedges of suburbia that the play really gets into its stride. Peter McKintosh’s set design is an advert for the middle-class dream, complete with patio doors and sunlit garden.

In other hands, the mistaken-identity jokes could have worn rather thin but Ayckbourn never once drops a beat, handing each of his characters their fair share of one-liners. It is a testament to his skill that while he wants us to laugh he clearly doesn’t want us to lose sight of the rather unpleasant side effects of men who leave their slippers under the wrong bed.

Until 31 August at Wyndham’s Theatre, Charing Cross Road, London WC2: 0844-482 5120, www.delfontmackintosh.co.uk