Bedroom Farce is a play for four men and four women. Ernest and Delia go out to a dinner to celebrate their wedding anniversary. When this is a failure they return home and prepare to celebrate with pilchards on toast in bed. Malcolm and Kate are preparing a house-warming party. Nick and Jan have been invited to this but Nick has hurt his back and prepares to rest quietly in bed. All three preparations are doomed, however, to disaster by the marital problems of Trevor (son of Ernest and Delia) and his wife Susannah, who descend on each couple in turn leaving chaos in their wake, finally taking over the bedroom (and bed) of the long-suffering Malcolm and Kate. The three bedrooms are presented simultaneously on stage and the action flows in and out from one to another during this hectic night.
The original title is the give-away: “Bedroom Farce, A Comedy”, where Ayckbourn skilfully combines the characters of Comedy with the improbable situations of Farce. This allows us to both laugh with and at the play. A comic criticism of the conduct of life in a manner which doesn’t offend. By avoiding types, he allows the audience to see them as fully rounded people with qualities and flaws like themselves.
Alan Ayckbourn writes: “Bedroom Farce has its moments of near farce and yet still contains elements of the claustrophobic - maybe because it’s all in bedrooms. It is also the first time I’ve made use, to quite such an extent, of the cross-cut device. Jumping the action from bedroom to bedroom gives the play an added rhythm over and above what the dialogue normally provides. Again, I’ve allowed the characters to progress, develop and resolve very much in their own way. Perhaps, as in my other plays, none of them finds instant happiness or sudden great self-insight. But at least they retain the dignity of resolving their own destinies.”
AARNE NEEME
