For three of its four acts, the tone of Alan Ayckbourn’s new play, his 82nd, is valedictory, almost a lament. In the centre of the stage, alone in a glass-doored summer house, islanded in a lawned garden, a white-haired, white-bearded man hunches over a laptop. Algy (Christopher Godwin) is struggling to complete his 33rd novel but is beset, as he sees it, by interruptions. Thelma (Liz Jadav), his secretary, wants to enthuse him about the website he doesn’t see the point of. Jessica (Eileen Battye), to whom he has been married for decades, wants him to explain why someone has moved the shops so she cannot find them. His pup of a publisher (Laurence Pears) makes him feel like a has-been. Jokes about the impossibility of keeping up with the speed of change raise sympathetic laughter from the audience. Ayckbourn, it seems, is talking to his generation.
And yet… although always clear, Ayckbourn’s work is seldom simple. He is famous for his structural games: here, he gradually blurs the boundaries between Algy’s real life and his fictional characters: bluff Yorkshire DCI Tommy Middlebrass (Russell Dixon) and “soft, southern” DS Gemma Price (Naomi Petersen). He is also knownfor his canny plot devices which, always double-purposed, develop both action and characters: a visit from a journalist (Leigh Symonds) results in a piece of fake news that shatters the life that Algy has known.
The fourth act changes tone and affirms something that informs the structure, plotting and characterisations of all Ayckbourn plays I can think of: the sense that life is about our connections to people around us, and what makes life worth living is love. That’s a sense all generations can share.
Michael Holt’s design, as lit by Jason Taylor, follows Ayckbourn’s lead – co-opting the audience’s imaginations to complete the picture. Ayckbourn’s actors (he also directs) form an interconnected ensemble, individually and collectively excellent.
• At the Stephen Joseph theatre, Scarborough, until 6 October
