Sharp as an arrow

Four couples but only three available bedrooms is the brilliant stratagem devised by Alan Ayckbourn for his 1975 relationship comedy Bedroom Farce.

Four couples but only three available bedrooms is the brilliant stratagem devised by Alan Ayckbourn for his 1975 relationship comedy Bedroom Farce. It’s being revived at the Rose Theatre in Kingston in repertory with a rather different take on coupled life, Strindberg’s Miss Julie, for an aptly named season, ‘Behind Closed Doors’. The three separate bedrooms fill up the unusually wide lozenge-shaped stage of the new Rose (modelled on the Elizabethan original) as our four couples writhe and wrangle under the spotlight of Ayckbourn’s all-seeing, all-knowing wit.

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Ernest and Delia who occupy the pink satin boudoir with en-suite bathroom on the far left are dressing up for their annual anniversary dinner in black tie and pearls (a bit odd even for the Seventies). Malcolm and Kate share the unmade, duvet-strewn love nest in the middle; while grumpy Nick lies bedridden with a pulled muscle in the stripey bedroom on the right, efficiently nursed by his long-suffering wife Jan. It’s the fourth couple — jangly, neurotic, troublesome Trevor and Susannah — whose lack of a bedroom throws everyone else into confusion.

Ayckbourn perfectly captures the repressed tensions of settled suburban married life. ‘You can tell a great deal from people’s bedrooms,’ says Ernest in the first act. Muffled giggles from the Kingston audience. Ernest, though, is much more worried about the state of his gutters. The giggles turn into laughs. When Delia recommends to Susannah, ‘If sex rears its head, close your eyes before you see the rest of it,’ the laughs become huge guffaws.

It’s not what these couples say to each other, but the way even Malcolm and Kate always talk at each other, never quite connecting, which creates the laughs.