Preview Communicating Doors & Life of Riley
Two Sir Alan Ayckbourn plays take the stage at Scarborough's Stephen Joseph Theatre during September and October
Preview: Communicating Doors & Life of Riley
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Theatre can be wary of film. Hardliners, whether directors or performers, frequently signal – though rarely say – that it is a diluted offshoot of their art. Many stress that the brittleness of live performance is invigorating, and don’t see it as dispensable. A more temperate mutation of this view is common among actors: otherwise, why would many whose faintest dietary manoeuvres are lovingly recorded in gossip columns exchange the big screen for the West End, where their income is a fragment of their on-camera earnings, so often?
This friction renders Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s Communicating Doors a curiosity. It’s fairly unusual for theatre’s aldermen to flirt brazenly with the other empire, yet the play pays homage to Psycho, Back to the Future and Carrie. Like all his works, it has a comic slant, but it also sources much from a genre whose prominence in film dwarfs its reticence on stage: the thriller. Indeed, knowing that the sci-fi plinth beneath its plot – time travel – would not endear the piece to audiences, he used it in a utilitarian way. Nonetheless, as his archivist Simon Murgatroyd notes on his website, some reviews were fixated on the device, and consequently neglected elements that were more worthy of comment.
Irrespective of its breach of drama’s dress code and a panoramic spread of opinion in reviews, theatrical circles ultimately favoured the play. As well as claiming the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award for Best West End Play and a nomination at the Olivier Awards, it became Ayckbourn’s first success at the Moliere Awards, where it won Best Comedy.
Set in a Savoy-inspired hotel room, the nub of its plot is that the communicating doors there separate guests not from an adjacent room, but the same one in the past or future. It opens with a dying man meeting a dominatrix; he then asks her to witness his confession that he instructed a charmer on his staff to see off both his wives. However, while the 1994 original bounced between 2014, 1994 and 1974, Ayckbourn’s new production begins in 2030 and backpedals to 2010 and 1990.
Communicating Doors’ origins also explain why it is among Ayckbourn’s more musical works. Seeking an echo of the soundtracks to the films that coloured it, Ayckbourn commissioned the company’s musical director John Pattison to assemble a score by experimenting during rehearsals. This assimilates traces of Bernard Hermann’s accompaniment to Psycho.
Ayckbourn directed the original version, but this is the first time that he has revisited it since. He’s producing it with the same outfit: Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre Company, of which he was artistic director between 1972 and 2009. However, this will be the first time that it has been produced at the converted cinema that currently provides its lodgings.
At 71, despite having suffered a stroke four years ago, Ayckbourn remains industrious. Hence, midway through Communicating Doors’ run, he will be guiding its cast through the premiere of his 74th play, Life of Riley, which will then play for a month.
Communicating Doors, until 5 October, £9–20 and Life of Riley, 16 September – 16 October, £9–20, both Stephen Joseph Theatre
Further information about the play is available on Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s official website, www.alanayckbourn.net
Posted on Thursday 5th August 2010
SW
Stephen Joseph Theatre
Westborough, Scarborough, YO11 1JW
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