Ayckbourn, Alan (Vol. 18) - Brendan Gill
BRENDAN GILL
Alan Ayckbourn's "Bedroom Farce" is modestly named. It is indeed a farce, and an exceptionally good one … but instead of taking place in a single bedroom …, it takes place in three bedrooms…. Moreover, the play isn't content to concern itself with the three couples that most of us might consider a sufficient number to fill three beds; no, it provides a fourth couple, who in the course of a long Saturday night tirelessly trample upon the lives of all the others and bring much temporary misery into the world….
As a writer of farces, Mr. Ayckbourn is a faithful disciple of Molière. Trevor, the protagonist of "Bedroom Farce," is dominated by a single obsession: though he sees it as his fate to be a clumsy destroyer of people and things, he believes that he possesses a miraculous gift for putting things right. At all hours of the day and night, and under no matter what circumstances, he is sure that he will be able to patch things up by...
[The entire page is 354 words long]
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