The good oldies

10 April 2012

A comedy about the elderly, or an elderly comedy about the way they are treated? Sam Walters's production leaves the true nature of Bernard Farrell's Irish drama unresolved.

The play is part JM Synge and part Alan Ayckbourn, although the better part is Synge. This is the story of Alice, who lives alone in the Emerald Isle and is courted by Jimmy, the man blamed for the death of her husband. Jimmy's excuse is that he went deaf during the war and never heard the husband's cries as he was gored by a bull in a field.

The other, worse, part of the play is more of an Ayckbourn farce in which the family attempts to coax Alice into a nursing home. Their argument is that Alice's bossy daughter, Barbara, lives in the US with her severely hen-pecked husband, Cormac. Meanwhile, the eldest son, Barry, is having a mid-life crisis after leaving his wife and family and taking up with a trainee reflexologist in

Basingstoke. It is mystifying how either of these couples stay together since Barbara is a screaming battle-axe, while Barry is a vulgar, bovine slob.

However, what holds the play together is increasingly desperate farce, although there is sentimental affection for Alice and Jimmy. The former is a dreamy old girl who sings Forever Blowing Bubbles and the latter is a bumbling old boy who is misunderstood by the world on account of his deafness. This leads to a deluge of iffy gags based on mishearings, but sadly also licenses the shrill younger couples to squabble noisily and incessantly. You are left only to wonder what Alice must have done to deserve such children.

The night of the last preview, Teresa McElroy's Barbara was almost permanently pink with fury while Paul Boyle as her downtrodden husband dozily suffered her spleen. Meanwhile, John Paul Connolly as Barry and Roisin Rae as his girlfriend also seek to hold attention with boorishness and simpering. Only Caroline John and Barry McCarthy as gentle Alice and docile Jimmy did not resort to caricature. Maybe this is part of Farrell's joke: that the youngsters not the oldsters are most in need of being sent to a home.

Happy Birthday Dear Alice

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