Gareth's Culture and Travel Blog

Alan Ayckbourn is famous for experimenting with form and structure and this 1999 pair of interlocking plays staged simultaneously in two spaces with two audiences and the cast moving between the two was amongst his most ambitious, and successful. In 2000 they were staged in the National’s Olivier and Lyttleton auditoriums and Ayckbourn had to write additional dialogue as it took longer to get from one to the other than it did in Scarborough, as it probably does here at the lovely Watermill Theatre where they stage Garden in the actual garden, which might be a first. In fact it might be the first revival?

We saw Garden in the afternoon, which seemed appropriate as the action centres around preparations for a fete, and House in the theatre in the evening, the opposite way round to my experience at the National. The fete is in the grounds of the Platt family home. They have a loveless marriage and a precocious teenage daughter who is being pursued by Jake, the son of neighbours’ the Mace’s. Teddy Platt is the son of former local MP’s and it is suggested he might stand in the future. Add to this cocktail the staff – gardener, housekeeper and her daughter the maid – a pair of local worthies, a visiting novelist and a minor French film star en route to rehab and you have the ingredients for Ayckbourn’s brand of middle class suburban social comedy, but underneath there are darker themes of infidelity, bullying, alcoholism, middle-aged men flirting inappropriately with teenage girls and a bizarre triangular relationship. 

Some storylines are evenly split between plays, but some dominate one or the other. It is suggested that you can see either or both, but seeing just one seems pointless to me as a lot of the fun comes in your second play seeing entrances that were once exits, and joining up the storylines for yourself. It’s a logistical marvel (three cheers for the stage managers) and it’s performed superbly by a 14 strong ensemble and a handful of kids.

Ayckbourn’s other experiments included one play with eight versions and sixteen possible endings with two actors playing ten roles, and his ambitious staging’s including a swimming pool on stage and a water-filled tank on which a full sized cruiser sat and moved (which famously sprung a leak). I have to confess I’ve enjoyed the experiments more than the plays, but I enjoyed this one more than most. Definitely worth a whole day in rural Berkshire!