Oxford Playhouse, 8-13 Feb 2010

‘My Wonderful Day’ has come from an off-Broadway run, apparently, but it’s hard to imagine what New Yorkers made of it. Like most of Ayckbourn’s late-period work, it’s the kind of anaemic farce that gives provincial English theatre a bad name. The actors are all fine, indeed they are much better than the material, and I sympathise with them for having to do this seven or eight times a week – I was wanting two hours of my life back after sitting through it once. They must be bored to tears.

If one was in a great mood on a Friday night, the play might just pass as the gentlest of diversions. Mid-week, it just felt purgatorial. As other reviewers have pointed out, though, many in the largely Saga-lout audience seemed to find it side-splitting – so it may be a generational thing.

Good to see the Playhouse getting some proper touring shows this season rather than the usual dreary line-up of student and local company productions, but this one really should have stayed in Scarborough.

Young Offender 11 Feb 2010

It's rare, tragically rare, but every so often a play comes along that describes something that you knew about, but could never quite put into words yourself. A dissatisfaction, an uncomfortable truth. And the best in this genre make you laugh as they do it. Such an accolade must be bestowed upon Alan Ayckbourn's latest play which is showing at the Oxford Playhouse until Saturday. It is both amusing and tragic really to consider last night’s audience, chuckling away to a play that savagely condemned the fatuous society they have built. I wonder how many felt the sense of guilt and anger that I did?

We see the action through the eyes of Winnie, an 8 (nearly 9) year old girl, wonderfully played by Ayesha Antoine. Winnie is taken to work in the middle-class home where her mother, 8 and a half months pregnant, works as a domestic cleaner. In an amusing device Winnie is only speaking French, as much to humour her mother's dream of a life in Martinique as anything else. The house is owned by a C-list TV-presenter and his film-maker wife who has just left him, apparently in fairly spectacular fashion.

The story is decptively simple. The TV presenter is having an affair with his ditzy assistant. The wife returns home. The wife smacks him over the head with her Bafta. However, the satirical touches are simply brilliant. The assistant, for example, is a brutal indictment of the 20-something generation, fantastically educated and utterly devoid of substance. Another is the washed up has-been Josh, spending his nights getting mindlessly drunk at Colin's leaving-do rather than doing something about the tragic fall out of his own family break-up.

The play ebbs and flows, mirroring how an eight year old would regard it. At times it's slow and fairly dull as Winnie amuses herself with chapter 4 of The Secret Garden. At others the action pours forth in waves around her. It's a way of producing theatre that I have never seen before and I can understand if some people's attention wandered. However, the play is deliberately constructed in this way so that the absurdity of adult life is accentuated. If you make just a little effort this play will hook you and show you something very important. It really is a great production, particularly for those who like their theatre to be about more than just entertainment.

The production is touring and will be showing at the Richmond Theatre next week.

Andy 11 Feb 2010

Amanda you are right on the button - we too sat in mystification as the rest of the audience laughed at the thinnest of jokes. The evening seemed endless and sadly we gave up and crept away before the end. Perhaps there was a point to it but it eluded us.

Baffled of Oxford 10 Feb 2010

I was an Alan Ayckbourn virgin until this evening. Now, after sitting through My Wonderful Day, I wish I had remained one.

Ayckbourn's latest offering (his 73rd!) charts a day in the life of nine-year-old London schoolgirl Winnie, who accompanies her heavily-pregnant Mum Laverne to Laverne's morning cleaning job at the home of Kevin and Paula Tate, an affluent chattering class couple who work in film and television. When Laverne and Winnie arrive early one Tuesday morning, Paula has left Kevin, apparently for good. Laverne doesn't turn a hair and gets on with the cleaning, despite her eight-and-a-half month bump. Winnie, meanwhile, as all around are losing their heads, keeps hers firmly on her neck and sits and writes a school essay on "My Wonderful Day".

Winnie was well-played by twenty-something actress Ayesha Antoine. As I heard more than one Playhouse-goer remark, "she caught the mannerisms of a nine-year-old child really well". Mum Laverne, played by Petra Letang, was solid and believable, holding on to her dream of returning to her ancestral home of Martinique with Winnie and the nearly-born Jericho Alexander Samson (sensible Laverne had decided to know the sex of her baby in advance).

The other characters - Kevin Tate, wife Paula, Kevin's PA and lover Tiffany, and his colleague Josh - were caricatures. TV presenter Kevin was full of his own importance and swore a lot; Tiffany ("Tiffany Louise - if you shorten it I sound like a cross between a quarrel and a lavatory") was ditzy, leggy, micro-mini-skirted and very high-heeled; cheeky chappy Josh was nursing a divorce-broken heart; and film producer Paula was a bitch.

Time passed slowly and painfully for me as I watched this play. I kept losing interest and just couldn't see the point. I was relieved to discover that there was no interval, allowing me to get an earlier train home.

In desperation, I decided to look for themes. Laverne expressed one when she told Winnie that money doesn't buy happiness; after all, just look at the Tates. Another was that children are individuals, and that you forget this at your peril. Another, I suppose, was that ego and ambition aren't really worth the effort.

As the evening dragged on, I realised that I was missing something. Really missing something. A fair few belly laughs gurgled their way out of the audience, particularly during a scene when Josh is snoring. No, I didn't find it very funny. Towards the end, Paula hits Kevin with her BAFTA award. OK, that was a bit funnier. But not that funny, surely.

The Playhouse was packed for this opening-night performance of My Wonderful Day, and most of the audience clearly loved it. I found it less than wonderful, and won't attend another Ayckbourn in a hurry. But don't let me put you off. As I said before, I am missing something.

Amanda Farr 9 Feb 2010

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