CityLife

Ayckbourn comedy is a relative classic

Leila Crerar (Ginny) and Simon Harrison (Greg) pictured during rehearsals

ALAN Ayckbourn’s Sixties comedy about relationships and misunderstandings, Relatively Speaking, completes the current season at the Library Theatre.

Running until June 20, the play is directed by the Library Theatre’s artistic director, Chris Honer.

The four-strong cast includes RSC actor Simon Harrison; Leila Crerar, making a swift return to the Library after appearing in Tom Stoppard’s Rock’n’Roll earlier this year; Lucy Tregear, who last appeared there in Much Ado About Nothing, in 2006; and Malcolm Scates, who plays Ralph Mellor in Waterloo Road.

In the play, Greg and Ginny, although very much a ‘new’ couple, have fallen in love and have started plans to get married.

All is going swimmingly as they discuss their Big Day.

However, when a number of odd and unexpected happenings start occurring at home, a suspicious Greg starts to think that there is more to Ginny than first meets his eye and that he might not even be the only man in her life.

The confusions are about to begin.

Chris, it’s fair to say, is not exactly a stranger to Ayckbourn’s work, having directed many memorable productions at the Library, including regional premieres.

So why, I wondered, had he felt drawn to this early example, famously written with the express purpose of entertaining Scarborough holidaymakers, when they couldn’t go on the beach because of the rain?

“I suppose, having done a lot of his very recent works, we thought it would be fun to have a look at one of the very early ones.

“Relatively Speaking is a joyous example of that early work,” he offers says.

Failure

“He had had a bit of a failure with a play before that, which was not well reviewed, and had gone to work for the BBC in Leeds.

“Stephen Joseph, who ran what was then the Scarborough Library Theatre, suggested he write a conventional play, that he was writing experimental plays without knowing what the rules were to be broken!
“So he wrote this play, which he called Meet My Mother and sent it off to Stephen Joseph.

Rehearsal

“He then didn’t hear any more about it until he found out it was in rehearsal.

“By the time it got to actually being produced it had changed its title to Meet My Father, again unbeknown to Ayckbourn.

“It was a big hit in Scarborough and two years later, having again changed its name to Relatively Speaking, it was produced in the West End where it was really the play that made his name,” explains Chris.

“What’s interesting about it is that, unlike a lot of the later work, this is based around just the one idea, which is of mistaken identity.

“But the way in which that idea is developed and varied and goes through several different metamorphoses is absolutely brilliant.

“Also, of course, you see in it already his way of pinning dysfunctional relationships. You see him starting to get at those strands of English life where relationships don’t really work.”

Relatively Speaking is at the Library from Tuesday, May 26 until Saturday, June 20. £8.80 - £14.70. Call 0161 236 7110.