Everyone is aware that smoking has consequences. Just how many are illustrated by Alan Ayckbourn's marathon multiple-choice drama, Intimate Exchanges, in which 16 potential outcomes are determined by a character's decision on whether to light a cigarette.
Ayckbourn conceived the project in 1982, as a challenge to himself and his Scarborough company, which numbered two at the time. Nobody expected to see the entire sequence staged again: yet when the final play, A Game of Golf, joins the repertoire on March 15, Ayckbourn obsessives will be able to sit through some 30 hours of alternative comedies.
You do not have to see the whole lot to appreciate the ingenuity of the conception, but if you have to pick a single play, A Pageant is perhaps the most satisfying dramatic entity in its own right. As with all the others, the play is set in the grounds of a declining public school, yet it stands apart through the development of a Pygmalion theme.
Handyman Lionel fancies the headmaster's wife and tries to instil some comparable deportment in his slovenly girlfriend, Sylvie. Ultimately, the experiment is so successful she is able to declare: "You told me to give up everything second-rate in my life, so I'm giving up you."
The outstanding Bill Champion and Claudia Elmhirst have been required to commit 400 pages of dialogue to memory, yet they never seem in danger of veering off into the wrong play. And with no disrespect to Tim Luscombe, who directed the early part of the cycle while Ayckbourn was recovering from a stroke, it is deeply satisfying to see this extraordinary project back in the hands of the master.
· In rep until May 5. Box office: 01723 370541.
