Alan Ayckbourn's breakthrough play, Relatively Speaking, which opened in the West End in 1967 remains lean and well-made; everything is geared towards a comedy of misunderstanding as generations clash and the English fall victim to their own polite reserve. But while one may admire the sleekness of the structure there's also the sense (as with certain well-groomed males) that there isn't much beneath the polish and patter.
       The play opens in Ginny's flat: a riot of feminine pinks and bright colours, circular mats and Beatles' posters. It is the summer of love and Ayckbourn daringly for his time shows that two of his characters share a bed. Ginny is an emancipated sixties beauty in white plastic raincoat and cap. She's had an affair with a married man, older than herself, and Greg - the rather petulant Robin Whiting - wants to marry her and protect her from rogue males. In a strange way it is the younger generation who believe in traditional values. The summer of love is just set-dressing to otherwise conventional lives; Greg has a job in insurance and there's no danger of his being infected by sixties politics or the desire to take drugs. One wishes he'd loosen up, maybe 'groove on down to a happening.' A weakness in the play is the narcissism and lack of charisma of this young couple: Greg's jokes about being an Indian wrapped in bed clothes aren't funny.
       This isn't realistic 'kitchen sink' drama (the kitchen sink is in fact off stage), but Ayckbourn plays with realistic conventions: the audience's interest in other people's love-making and their messy domesticity, Ginny in her bra and knickers visiting the bathroom. In the next act Paul Farnsworth's garden design is a lovely contrast to the cramped, disposable world of the flat. Under bright summer lighting, wisteria hangs succulently against faded red brick; French doors open on to a room crammed with books. Peter Bowles' Philip is a convincingly dried up husband, seemingly repelled by his wife (Diana Fletcher), preferring to spend the morning searching for a missing 'hoe' - a word that gathers significance throughout the production, ragging her about a letter she received one Sunday, building an implausible story around her alleged marital infidelities. The dignified Sheila merely ignores him.
       Greg turns up in the middle of this souring mid-life idyll. Sheila thinks him charming but clearly a bit mad, and misunderstandings (exacerbated by polite Englishness) come thick and fast. Philip is convinced that Greg is his wife's lover and when Greg asks about marriage, Philip assumes he means Sheila rather than Ginny. When Ginny finally arrives, it becomes clear that Philip is not her father (we've guessed as much) but the older man who she had an affair with and who has been showering her with presents.
       The play was designed to divert holiday-makers in Scarborough, to 'make people laugh when their seaside summer holidays were spoiled by the rain.' This is a noble aim, but in the absence of bad weather an urban audience may require a little more. The audience was really laughing but I found the unfolding of the farce far too predictable, there were no additional complications - things were as they seemed from the beginning. One can't help feeling that this farce has only survived because of Ayckbourn's far more brilliant later work. The play is diverting but in a careless way, inducing no post-theatre discussion, just something ephemeral, light and disposable like the dated period furnishings in Ginny's flat.
Daniel Jeffreys