Alan Ayckbourn likes to surprise his audiences. The astringent farceur of suburban angst is concluding his 36-year career as artistic director of the SJT with a winter's (fairy) tale. Not that this is a children's show. Duncan Patrick and Alice Fearn's picture-book prince and princess are innocently, if explicitly, delighted in the physicality of their attraction, while the thwarted witch - magnificent Anna Francolini - dupes the prince into relieving her sexual frustrations with uninhibitedly raunchy relish.
That's not the only surprise. Having declared in 2005 that he had stopped writing musicals because he didn't enjoy them, Ayckbourn invited composer Denis King to collaborate on a musical without musicians or instruments (except keyboard). The versatile voices of the ensemble create not only songs but the sounds of spiders weaving webs and a sleep-shattering chorus of baby triplets crying through the night.
What's not surprising, though, from the man whose theatre career has included stints as stage manager and actor as well as writer (of more than 70 plays) and director (of hundreds), is the sheer virtuosity of the show. Ayckbourn uses simple storytelling and stock characters to develop a narrative that is partly fantastical (with castles and caverns and magic broomsticks), part forensic analysis of the real-life threats to love. Fleeing the witch, the lovers escape to the rundown limits of a present-day city. In an inverse pantomime transformation, their crowns turn to paper and supermarket shelf-stacker turns out to be the only job an unqualified fairy-tale prince can find.
Comedy, here, skirts tragedy as poverty and parental exhaustion undermine the couple's affection. Just as the happy ending seems lost, Ayckbourn - bowing out on a high note - delivers it with a satisfyingly surprising twist.
