THEATRE REVIEWS

You walk into the Royal Hotel in Scarborough and are confronted with the main staircase opulently inviting you to the hotel. Somewhere in the background lurk the Hotel porter and the Duty manager. Over the years thousands of people have crossed the threshold, navigated the stairs and gone into their own fantasies. Alan Ayckbourn has done just that with this trip to Scarborough based on Sheridan’s play, which was itself taken from traditional sources written in the sixteen hundreds. Ayckbourn has added trips to the hotel in 1942 and 2007 in an endeavour to bring the original story up to date. So what has he come up with?

We have three time zones punctuated by the light emitted from the central chandelier hanging in the hotel lobby, with the hotel’s main staircase in the background as a functional backdrop. The set, thought out and designed by Michael Holt, gives an opulent feeling to the space against which the actors are to perform. The catalyst to the play are the two hotel workers, the Hotel porter and the Duty manager played by Adrian McLoughlin and Dominic Hecht. They drift between time zones with effortless ease and hold the play together in front of the stairway to intrigues.

We have the 1800s, with foppish goings on intertwined with the hand in marriage of a young daughter. The wartime illicit weekend with a sinister illegal motive. Finishing up with a daughter wanting to save her father from bankruptcy with the sale of a playwright’s manuscript to two unscrupulous dealers. This is all woven together with the help of musicians who flit from one period to another with music supplied by Denis King. Add song and dance routines devised by Sheila Carter and a fight arranged by Alison De Burgh and you have the ingredients for something approaching a farce, but which stays a play. The actors take many parts and convince in each as they show their talents.

Now to the play itself. The director Alan Ackbourn gets the best from his actors, with clear diction spoken in the style and words of the time in which they are placed which shows the hand of a master director. The writing has the non abusive, no bad language approach of the 1980s when it was written. The play was a little too long in its duration, which tended to make for confusion towards the end of the plot. Whether it is a play for today’s audiences only they can say, so try it and see. You have to try it with Ayckbourn for it will mean something different to each and not all the subtleties will be discovered. © BA

“A Trip to Scarborough” is at the Round, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough from the 6th December until the 5th January, 2008. This is a No Smoking theatre.

Is there an Air Conditioning certificate prominently displayed in your theatre foyer stating the date of manufacture of the appliance and when the system was last inspected and serviced - if not, complain to the theatre management.