Absent Friends is the least technically adventurous of Alan Ayckbourn’s plays. Yet Jeremy Herrin’s revival (Harold Pinter Theatre, booking until 14 April) seems determined to display all its workings.
The fact that the action unfolds in real time is thrust in our face with a big clock on the back wall, and an even bigger one on the curtain (lest we forget during the interval). Of the three couples who meet for a reunion, one is flattened into a caricature, with David Armand overplaying John’s fidgetiness, while Kara Tointon’s Evelyn (above) takes taciturnity to an exhibitionistic extreme. And then each awkward conversational pause is held just enough seconds too long for it to seem that the play is acting the actors, not the other way around.
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