Some 65,000 litres of water and an actual 21ft boat that sails atop it, alongside a backdrop riverbank of real trees: it takes a confident theatre to mount a play with such almighty demands. High-flying Chichester, with its recently revamped auditorium, is just that theatre and the opening offering of its 2015 Festival season is a glorious feat of technical achievement in Nadia Fall’s precision-directed production.
If only Alan Ayckbourn’s script were half as accomplished as the work of Fall, designer Ben Stones and spot-on lighting designer Tim Mitchell. As it is Way Upstream (1981) is quite the oddest play I’ve seen from this writer, segueing from one of his customary tragi-comedies of marital disharmony to a perplexing Biblical allegory.
It all starts promisingly enough, as two unhappily married couples set sail for a 12-day boating holiday. There’s amusement aplenty, stopping just short of the dizzying summits of blissful comedy, and when the foursome pick up a handsome drifter en route, we settle back contentedly in anticipation of imminent mutiny on the Hadforth Bounty.
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What follows are events far darker and nastier, not to mention more surreal and downright bizarre. It’s hard to know how to take the second half and a muddled ending suggests even Ayckbourn might be uncertain. Nonetheless, the hard-working cast, including Sarah Parish as discontented, up-for-anything June and Jill Halfpenny as decent, timid Emma, plough gamely onwards towards a conclusion at the portentously named Armageddon Bridge.
Until May 16 (01243 781312, cft.org.uk)
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