An anxious-looking woman hurries into the garden, sees a packet of cigarettes and, after a brief moment of internal debate, pulls one out. The funny thing is, I thought she'd given up.
Intimate Exchanges is Alan Ayckbourn's game of theatrical chance: a labyrinthine sequence of 30 variant scenes, divided into eight different plays with 16 possible endings. The outcome is dependent on whether a character chooses to smoke a cigarette. To complicate things still further, all six characters are played by the same two actors, which requires them to learn some 16 hours of dialogue and negotiate endless rapid-fire quick changes, while remaining vigilant as to which play they're in. No wonder it has never been revived in its entirety since 1982.
The sad irony is that, having suffered a stroke in February (from which he says he is recovering well), Ayckbourn was unable to fulfil his long-held ambition to revisit these plays. Yet with Tim Luscombe stepping in to direct, the project appears to be in more than capable hands.
The first two variants are up and running, with the rest to be added over the course of the year. In the first we see repressed headmaster's wife Celia enduring a dismal seaside break in what her whisky-pickled husband describes as "a geriatric Valhalla". In the second, serial cuckold Miles stages a sit-in protest in a garden shed.
The seamlessness with which Claudia Elmhirst and Bill Champion spin through a variety of wigs, personalities and accents is astonishing, and convincingly suggests that the destiny of each character hangs in the balance. Will Celia leave her drunken husband? Will Miles ever come out of his shed? That would be to give the ending away. Or two of them, in any case.
· In rep until July 8. Box office: 01723 370541
