Confusions is a confusing theme, and a classic instance of the days when Alan Ayckbourn announced a title before putting pen to paper on the actual play. Or, in this case, plays: the evening is a package of five interlinked encounters that degenerate into disorientation. A more appropriate title might be Communication, each play being a comic object lesson in the myriad ways adults fail to get through to each other.
One of the characters admits to being a "collector of people", and one has the sense that Confusions developed as the author's own album of prize eccentrics, who couldn't be placed in any of his longer plays. Ayckbourn has spoken of a woman he once met who was so confined to the company of her own children that she spoke to everyone using toddler talk. This becomes the premise for the first play, Mother Figure, in which Lucy puts her neighbours' ailing relationship to rights by telling them to behave themselves and rewarding them with a biscuit. Lucy, it appears, hasn't seen her husband for weeks. In the second play we find out why - he's a leery commercial traveller, pathetically attempting to insinuate a pair of salesgirls into an inspection of his hotel bedroom.
The theme develops in a fractious restaurant scene, in which we assimilate only what the waiter hears as he walks between the domestic crises erupting at the tables. A sniping councillor's wife storms out of this play to star in the next, as the guest of honour at a fete. Here she is misdirected into a ploughed field by a bunch of scouts, while an erratically functioning PA system broadcasts the admission of an illicit pregnancy to the entire field.
Gosforth's Fete finds Ayckbourn's malign comic genius at the peak of its form, and marks the highlight of Alice Bartlett's serviceable revival. If there's something missing, however, it's the undertow of desolation that binds these plays together. Taken one by one there's plenty to enjoy, but overall these confusions never fuse.
Until October 20. Box office: 01482 323638.
