"How all occasions do inform against me", what with several not-to-be-missed movies all arriving at once; not one, not two, but three birthday celebrations; and yesterday, a theatre trip to London courtesy of 'SoD'! So, apologies to you all for my tardiness and I will get round to responding to several comments which have been left as soon as I can.
Absent Friends is a relatively early Aybourn play written in the mid-seventies. It is a domestic comedy of bad manners featuring, as so often in his plays, a set of couples, although on this occasion the husband of one of the ladies is absent in bed with what sounds like terminal hypochondria; and the partner, actually the fiancee, of one of the men is also absent due to her accidental death by drowning! Great efforts are made by all concerned to avoid the subject of her death but, as you would expect with Ayckbourn, they fail miserably - but hilariously. Already in this early play Ayckbourn is investigating one of the basic elements of theatre - Time. In this play he abides by part of what they call 'the classical unities' in that stage time and real time are synchronous. As time went by Aykbourn pushed, stretched and tested the fundamentals of theatrical time and space which is part of why he is more, far more, than just a superb writer of comic situations in which various mirrors are held up to audiences who are almost dared to see if they can recognise themselves in his plays. (I once did, and still shudder at the memory of suddenly seeing myself in the form of one of his more buffoonish inventions!) Ayckbourn has a bleak eye for human nature and whilst we laugh it is sometimes tinged with uneasiness. It is difficult ever to like many of his characters even as we laugh at them. Even so, it is very rare for Ayckbourn not to provide you with an excellent evening in the theatre and this production at the unfortunately-named Harold Pinter Theatre is no exception.
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