I have a particular fondness for farce, both in real life and on the stage, and so it was with great pleasure that I attended press night at The Theatre, Chipping Norton for their ‘home-grown’ production of Alarms and Excursions, by Michael Frayn. The play comprises six scenes, each portraying a different snapshot of lives which revolve around technology and gadgets. Answering machines, trouser presses, telephones, errant smoke alarms and complicated corkscrews… this is the 90s, where new tech causes as many problems as it promises to solve.
Clever staging meant seamless transitions between scenes, with a set which gave the essentials and nothing more. No farce is complete without a great deal of door-opening, but this never descended into the absurd. Instead the real comedy was found in the script itself, and in crucial sound effects which were timed to perfection.
The men, Charlie Buckland and Eliot Giuralarocca, were funny, blustering buffoons, but it was the women who lifted each scene out of the ordinary. Kali Peacock has superb timing and hit the perfect balance between comedy and pathos. She provided a glorious contrast to Kate Copeland, who slipped effortlessly between roles. Superb direction meant that all four fitted together into six furiously fast, wonderfully comic sketches. A scene in adjoining hotel bedrooms, where one couple’s rigorous efforts to kill a mosquito are mistaken by the other for vigorous – and slightly naughty – sex had the audience breathless with laughter.
A superb play, perfectly staged and brilliantly performed.
Alarms and Excursions at The Theatre, Chipping Norton, runs until 12 March 2014.
