Because he has been around so long, we tend to take Alan Ayckbourn for granted. But his 67th play, touching down in Richmond between Scarborough and New York, strikes me as one of his recent best; and although Ayckbourn himself describes it as cinematic, possibly because of its 110-minute length, I'd call it quintessentially theatrical in its Chekhovian ability to wring laughter out of quiet desperation.
The clue lies in the title: Ayckbourn is writing about those people who, amid the noisy clatter of bars, cafes and offices, are wreathed in perpetual solitude. Dan, a cashiered army officer, gets pissed nightly to cover the collapse of his long-standing engagement to upper-class Nicola. The loveless Imogen escapes from her estate agent brother, Stewart, to spend forlorn nights waiting for non-arriving agency dates. And while Ambrose, a middle-aged barman, secretly grieves over the death of his male lover, the Bible-reading Charlotte is racked by the urgent temptations of the flesh.
"Only connect," said EM Forster; but the tragedy of Ayckbourn's sextet is that, although their lives ingeniously intersect, they remain inescapably solitary. Which makes the play sound much gloomier than it is, since Ayckbourn extracts buoyant comedy out of his characters' secret selves. Alexandra Mathie brilliantly suggests the raging sensualist under Charlotte's demure exterior as she smilingly hands over camouflaged porn videos to Paul Kemp's shy estate agent.
The scene where Sarah Moyle's lonely Imogen hooks up with Paul Thornley's drink-fuelled Dan, meanwhile, is hilariously touching in that it reveals that both possess an appetite for life that goes sadly unsatisfied. For all my attacks on the modish tyranny of the interval-free play, Ayckbourn's gains enormously from being played straight through. His own production also fits very snugly into the Orange Tree, where the characters' necessary physical closeness counterpoints their ultimate spiritual separation.
With Melanie Gutteridge's nervy Nicola and Adrian McLoughlin's secretly sad barman completing a fine cast, this is a play that shows Ayckbourn has not lost his rare, undervalued gift for comic compassion.
· Until June 4. Box office: 020-8940 3633.
