Confusions – East Riding Theatre, Beverley

Writer: Alan Ayckbourn

Director: Clive Kneller

At 50 years old, Confusionsis one of Alan Ayckbourn’s slighter plays, but consistently entertaining and with his usual acerbic eye in the follies and absurdities of Mankind. Described as “three interlinked one-act plays”, the link is strongest in the two that make up the first half:Mother FigureandDrinking Companions.

If you were to take two stereotypes of husband and wife failing in marriage, then marry them off to each other, you’d end up with something like the first half of Confusions. Lucy is obsessed with her children, never goes out, never dresses properly, ignores all the phone calls from her absent husband, away for work, sees everything in toddler terms, and attracts the attention of her neighbours who think she may be ill. When Rosemary and, later, Terry appear, she finds it difficult to recognise them, but soon settles into a routine of normal treatment for toddlers: infant terminology, don’t have more than two choccy biscuits and so on until she reaches the ultimate, Terry can’t have his front door keys until he apologises for being rude.

As they depart and the stage crew hastily change the set, Harry phones, Lucy thinks about it, then decides against answering, so Harry gives up with no sign of concern and resumes his conversation with Paula in a hotel bar. So this is what the missing husband gets up to! It’s a pathetic picture of the travelling salesman (hopefully) on the make: increasingly obvious chat-up lines. ever more absurd compliments, ever-drunkener hints about his room key. Paula’s more forthright friend, Bernice, arrives and the two ultimately sneak out, leaving the waiter to toss the room keys to Harry.

Nothing really happens in either play, but, as well as being amused, the audience is left pondering. Did Lucy develop her obsession with the kids because of Harry’s neglect? Or did Harry turn unsuccessful bar-room seducer because Lucy paid him no attention? Or did they both just marry the wrong person?

After the interval farce takes over, withGosforth’s Fete, each of the five cast members taking on a stereotypical British figure: Gosforth himself, optimistic whatever the disaster, the ineffectual Vicar, the Scoutmaster, helpless in the face of his wolf cubs’ depredations, Millie, self-effacing mistress of the tea urn, and Mrs. Pearce, local councillor and fete-opener. All that can go wrong does, with Ayckbourn’s extra little twist a failure of the amplification system that rights itself just in time to broadcast Millie’s little secret far and near.

Clive Kneller’s economical production maintains a good pace throughout in Emily Clay’s practical sets. Of the cast, the two women appear in all three plays, in Jade Farnill’s case (Rosemary, Paula and Millie) as a roughly similar character: polite, considerate, willing to accept the other person’s viewpoint up to a point. Farnill differentiates them neatly, with a steely note lurking somewhere behind Millie’s gentle exterior. Where she demurely rebuffs Harry’s advance, Hannah Levy’s Bernice storms onto the attack. Levy’s finest hour comes in the opener, with her manic performance as Lucy, and she also delivers an oddly sympathetic view of Mrs. Pearce.

John Peters, on the other hand, after a simple stint as the Waiter, can devote himself to the last play, blustering away as Gosforth, re-drawing his plans by the minute. The other notable male performance comes from Mark Inman whose Harry is as oily and as ineffective as it should be before he indulges in another bout of drunkenness as the Scoutmaster. Robert Wade doubles as the irascible Terry, finally worn down by Lucy, and a rather over-the-top Vicar.

Runs until 18th May 2024