Cultural Dessert

On Saturday evening we were at Milton Keynes Theatre to see Peter Hall’s Rose Theatre, Kingston, production of Alan Ayckbourn’s 1976 play ‘Bedroom Farce’. Set in three contrasting bedrooms, all seen next to each other on the stage, this is a cleverly constructed comedy which features four couples so that someone is always out of place. A variety of devices are employed to create reasons why people end up in each other’s bedrooms but ‘Bedroom Farce’ isn’t really a bedroom farce at all in the conventional sense. Like most Ayckbourn plays it deals with ordinary people in a domestic setting and is concerned with relationships at different stages of development. As well as being very funny, ‘Bedroom Farce’ is suffused with typical Ayckbournian poignancy and it’s easy to recognise aspects of yourself and your own relationships in all four couples. Setting all the action in three bedrooms is a model that was developed to great effect by Andy Hamilton in his ‘Bedtime’ TV drama series but Ayckbourn was doing it 30 years earlier.