INTRODUCING his 91st play, writer-director Alan Ayckbourn says: “We have to remember there are still good things floating about in the world today, though it’s often hard to see them. But the good is still there if we look for it.”
You might well put Ayckbourn’s annual world premiere at the Stephen Joseph Theatre on that list, but let’s consider his point – and note the Scarborough knight’s reference to “today”.
Latterly, his comedy dramas have tended to reflect on the past or look to the future, but Earth Angel is a play for today and of today, albeit its world of conspiracy theories, the poisonous well of social media and scathing putdowns of anyone deemed “too nice” will only become more omnipresent.
Earth Angel is a mystery wrapped inside a domestic drama set in West Yorkshire. Not for the first time, Ayckbourn and his designer, Kevin Jenkins, give us a kitchen and a sitting room – or, rather, two sitting rooms, one for each half, in an open-plan theatre-in-the-round setting where the front door and inside and outside walls are cut off half way up.
Mystery number one: who is Daniel (British/Malaysian actor Iskandar Eaton, originally from Sheffield, in his SJT debut)? All in Milk Tray Man black, he is helping well-meaning nosey neighbour Norah (Ayckbourn regular Elizabeth Boag) with the washing-up after the funeral wake for Amy, school teacher, former folk singer and hippy spiritualist wife of Gerald Mallett, fellow teacher and 15 years her senior.
Gerald (SJT newcomer Russell Richardson) is sitting alone in the sitting room as Daniel and Norah talk of the lovely service and the vicar’s even lovelier appraisal of Amy as an Earth Angel. Norah, like the audience, becomes increasingly curious as to whom and what Daniel is.
He was there to comfort Gerald, he explains, but admits he did not know Gerald until today, confirming he was not a former pupil. Curiouser and curiouser, thinks Norah, who doesn’t want Gerald to be on his own tonight.
Gerald, however, rather warms to the natural simpatico of Daniel, seeing Norah’s fussing and fretting off the premises. Perhaps Daniel is the Earth Angel? Norah, however, alerts fellow busy-body Hugo (Hayden Wood), who insists on staying on Gerald’s sofa, his laptop his perma-partner, his tunnel vision, as he looks into who Hugo may be. Eyes down for a full house of nonsense.
Hugo, a deliciously satirical Ayckbourn character written in frustrated response to those who only have eyes for their screen, is a modern-day irritant who may be in the room and yet is not in the room, his mind elsewhere. In his case, the electronic web of intrigue.
In keeping with today’s self-righteous world, he never listens to anyone, except to the rumours spreading through the internet wildfire. Where once there were Chinese whispers, idle chit-chat and pub gossip, now it is the tap, tap, tap drip-feed of electronica that is all pervasive – and persuasive.
While Hugo is piling up the conspiracies – is Daniel a zombie, a serial killer or maybe an alien? – Gerald’s stuck-up sister, intransigent, insufferable magistrate Maxine (Ayckbourn favourite Liza Goddard) and her grouchy, old-school, know-it-all husband, ex-policemen Adrian (fellow Ayckbourn stalwart Stuart Fox) are turning up from Doncaster to stick their oar in, fanning the flames of the ever more absurd speculation.
Post interval, in Act Three, the sitting room is now the cushion-laden one in Norah’s house, where the co-conspirators are plotting what to do with Daniel – and recoiling at the disgusting coffee made by Norah (a running joke in Ayckbourn tradition).
They are making a meal of everything; Daniel, meanwhile, is making the perfect breakfast for a grateful, trusting Gerald, but still the mysteries remain. Who exactly is Daniel and who is the real Earth Angel?
One answer is provided as Ayckbourn’s tone turns darker, as he is wont to do in Ibsen vein, but still he pumps up the farce too in his latter-day theatre of the absurd. The other, you must decide for yourself, but it affirms that opening sentiment of the good still being there if you look for it. It feels a nourishing finale, in more ways than one.
Throughout, you can delight in director Ayckbourn’s mastery of movement around the 360-degree stage amid the shifting sands of his plot. As ever, he has cast superbly, both in familiar faces Goddard, Fox and especially Boag, and in those new to Ayckbourn at the SJT, Richardson’s free-spirited Gerald, Wood’s taciturn meddler and Eaton’s quietly impressive Daniel.
Alan Ayckbourn’s Earth Angel runs at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until October 11, then on tour until November 8. Scarborough box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.