Ayckbourn, Alan - J.K.L. Walker (review 1992)
J.K.L. Walker (review 1992)
SOURCE: A review of Absent Friends, in Times Literary Supplement, No. 4663, August 19, 1992, p. 16.
[In the following review, Walker suggests Ayckbourn's Absent Friends leaves an audience less than satisfied.]
Absent Friends is not one of Alan Ayckbourn's funniest plays, but then, nor was it intended to be. When it came to London from Scarborough in 1975, with Richard Briers in the role of Colin, the happy innocent who creates havoc in the lives of his old friends, the play met with a mixed critical reception, one reviewer dismissing it as “woefully limp”, with a weak plot and unconvincing characters. Despite this, the play achieved a respectable nine-month run and has since often been seen as one of Ayckbourn's best, a tragi-comedy that perceptively reveals the futility and bitterness underlying conventional suburban marriage.
The plot is simple. A group of friends assembles one...
[The entire page is 837 words long]
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