Virtual Reality

at The Playhouse until Saturday 19th February 2000

A tale of mid-life male angst, Virtual Reality by Alan Ayckbourn follows the misguided fortunes of a man confronted by the strictures of middle age.

Alex Huby (Andrew Havill) is a forty-something man, a designer of virtual gardens, and married to successful and dynamic Penny (Celia Nelson), presenter of Who What Where? (or was it What Where How?..). Prosperous and superficially stable, the couple have fallen victim to the impersonality of modern communications, as Penny barely takes off her mobile ear-piece, and Alex is more in touch with his virtual creations than with his wife or teenage son. A chance encounter with a young aspiring actress leads to a farcical affair, as Alex, enamoured more, we realise, by the image of youth than by the dubious charms of flighty Cassie Renton (Daisy Beaumont), embarks upon a disastrous quest to regain life and love. Meanwhile Alex's colleague Barney doggedly stands by as his wife Beth descends into alchoholism, allowing himself only the occasional furtive glance at a passing pair of legs.

The physical, intellectual and emotional incompatibility of Cassie and Alex is obvious to the point of embarassment. The excruciating collision of youth with middle-age makes the pursuit of this immature, twenty-three-going-on-eighteen year old girl almost perverse, although we are led to believe that this 'shacking up with Shirley Temple' syndrome happens all the time. Indeed it may, but the sense that this play is itself written and directed by, yes you guessed it, a middle aged man, is often overwhelming. The direction indicates a profound lack of understanding of the young girl, the role limited to an impossibly immature young woman who is reduced to a vomiting student after two glasses of wine, a very shallow stereotype indeed. It is hard to believe that such a girl would fall for a middle-aged man in the first place, let alone react with delight when he arrives with a suitcase on her doorstep.

This is just one of the many inconsistencies of Cassie, who is often bashful and irritatingly babyish, yet can shout about the charms of her body in the middle of a crowded restaurant with no qualms at all. Daisy Beaumont gives a little too much to the silly side of the role, and not enough thought to the twenty-three year old who should have some idea of who she is and what she wants. It seems that all the characters can only go as far as their stereotypes allow, after which they are rather nonplussed as to what to do next. Celia Nelson as Penny is at first almost inhumanly dynamic, with a tendency to shout, and her subsequent descent into betrayed depression is hardly convincing. Alex emits an uncompromising dullness as he spreads a yellow floral tablecloth on Cassie's trendy marble table., successfully illustrating the incongruity of wealthy middle-age with untidy youth. However, perhaps he needs to be a little more frustrated, and a little more passionate in order to make the role interesting. The star performance has to be Susie Blake as Beth, who has some of the funniest lines, and whose role as a blousy alchoholic is a stereotype with lots of scope.

A series of metallic panels comprise the set, swinging around to reveal different scenes. The constant change of scenery, combined with ample use of off-stage voices, makes the effect a little too complicated (particularly with the unintentionally comical, crematorium-style sliding panel in the middle). Nevertheless, the transparent box in the centre, giving the impression that we are looking on to an outside scene of an old gardener pruning a rose bush, adds a surreal technicolour to the stage. The scene becomes more and more relevant as the play progresses, both as a central symbol of the virtual reality that, according to Alex, we all exist within, and as an example of the illusory and potentially dysfunctional world that Alex constructs for himself. The tableau captures the sense of looking in from the outside, and, finally, the uncomfortable feeling that were we on the other side, this virtual world would perhaps be less crazy than our real one,

On the whole, a predictable script with some flashes of brilliance. Worth a watch, but don't expect a revelation.

Jane Labous 16/02/2000