To date playwright Alan Ayckbourn has written ninety-four plays which have been performed in his home town of Scarborough, London’s West End and National Theatre and the world. When I was a teenager in the 1970s I started to develop an interest in theatre, joined a couple of amateur theatre groups in my home city of Derby and regularly attended the then Derby Playhouse often to enjoy Ayckbourn’s inventive comedy dramas like the three plays that comprise The Norman Conquests, Relatively Speaking, Absurd Person Singular, Bedroom Farce, Seasons Greetings, A Chorus of Disapproval, and Woman In Mind. Later in his career I would read about Way Upstream (featuring a floating canal barge on stage in real water!), Communicating Doors and House and Garden all performed at the National Theatre. In 1998 he had another stage hit with Comic Potential and has since written another play about AI called Constant Companions about the potential for human beings to fall in love with an android. Similarly, Comic Potential explores both the world of comedy and the potential for a human to develop feelings for an aktoid, JCF 31333, a life-like robot who is playing a nurse in a banal television soap opera some time in the near future.
It is a popular play for amateur groups to put on and this week at Nottingham’s Lace Market Theatre they have two visiting groups from the German city of Karlsruhe, the Theater Die Kaeuze presenting Ein komisches Talent (Comic Potential) 25-26 May and Jakobus Theater who are doing a Bernard Slade comedy called Same Time, Next Year 27-28 May. There are three performances of each including matinees and the tickets are free but you do have to book. They are both talented groups and it is well worth seeing their plays. The Lace Market Theatre also take two plays to Karlsruhe as part of a long standing cultural exchange ongoing since 1982.
Director Tobias Jost has taken the practicalities of scene transitions and made them into a virtual art form with all of the cast developing robotic movements and shuffling quickly around the stage placing the furniture and objects for the following scene. These transitions are done with a blue stage light and accompanying music which has an electronic techno sound. The actions and placements are achieved at speed and lends a charged energy to the piece. What could have been laborious turns out to be one of the many highlights in an excellent production by Theater Die Kaeuze.
The whole show is fast-paced and Dennis Gollis is outstanding as the manic TV director Chandler Tate. Gollis’ onstage frantic energies fuel the whole play. Aaliyah Klix nails the difficult part of the ‘aktoid’ Jacie. Her timing is perfect and is very believable as the android who likes to laugh and is discovering its almost human self. Klix’s delivery of her robotic high speed speeches are exceptionally good and the scene in the restaurant where she declares her food and drink bag to be in urgent need of changing is hilarious. Michael Kaupp’s Adam Trainsmith, the author who falls for Jacie, is played just the right side of sympathetic and given another gentler kind of energy that works splendidly opposite the other more energetic characters.
I read Alan Ayckbourn’s play in English a few weeks before attending tonight and to be honest I found the opening scenes a little twee as they played in my head. But then when they unfold onstage they are not twee at all. In fact they are very engaging and set up the studio hierarchy with the director; the two technicians Prim Springs (Karin Krebs) and Trudi Floote (Julia Eberle) and, demonstratively launching herself on and off the stage at speed, often in a furious mood, Head of the Studio Carla Pepperbloom (Larissa Kaufman-Nicolaus). The ensemble often play more than one role and all do so with total commitment and gusto. Their antics and actions are a joy to watch.
I speak some German but am certainly not fluent yet there is much that I understood and picked up during a very entertaining evening of theatre. Even if you don’t speak any German, except “Ja and Nein” and “Ich liebe dich” (yes that does feature in the German translation) the play is still very enjoyable and worth supporting. It plays at The Lace Market Theatre for two more performances on Tuesday 26th May. I also urge you to see the next play, Same Time Next Year on 27-28 May by members of Jakobus Theater.
A free programme is also available at the theatre which gives a helpful brief synopsis of the play. Finishing time 22.00 hrs and 17.00 at the matinée.
