The Upcoming
  • Cinema & Tv
    • Movie reviews
    • Film festivals
      • Berlin
      • Tribeca
      • Sundance London
      • Cannes
      • Locarno
      • Venice
      • London
      • Toronto
    • Show reviews
  • Music
    • Live music
  • Food & Drinks
    • News & Features
    • Restaurant & bar reviews
    • Interviews & Recipes
  • Theatre
  • Art
  • Travel & Lifestyle
  • Literature
  • Fashion & Beauty
    • Accessories
    • Beauty
    • News & Features
    • Shopping & Trends
    • Tips & How-tos
    • Fashion weeks
      • London Fashion Week
      • London Fashion Week Men’s
      • New York Fashion Week
      • Milan Fashion Week
      • Paris Fashion Week
      • Haute Couture
  • Join us
    • Editorial unit
    • Our writers
    • Join the team
    • Join the mailing list
    • Support us
    • Contact us
  • Competitions
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

  • RSS

CultureTheatre

Relatively Speaking at Wyndham’s Theatre

Relatively Speaking at Wyndham’s Theatre | Theatre review
21 May 2013
Nichola Daunton
Avatar
Nichola Daunton
21 May 2013

Forty-six years after its London premiere, Alan Ayckbourn’s first major critical success (which earned him a congratulatory telegram from Noël Coward) is revived here in all its 60s glory. Starring a sparkling and instantly lovable Felicity Kendal, Ayckbourn’s lighthearted comedy tracks the confusions, deceptions, and misunderstandings of two couples at opposing ends of married life.

The curtain rises on the flat of Ginny and Greg, a young couple, a month into their relationship. Greg, naive, besotted, and proposing marriage, suspects Ginny of carrying on with someone else due to the many bunches of flowers strewn about the flat, and the rather large slippers he finds under her bed. Anxious to lock the deal down, he follows her to what he believes is her parents’ house in Buckinghamshire – in reality the home of her older lover Philip, from whom she wants to separate once and for all. Arriving before her, Greg sets off a comical chain of confusion as Philip takes him for his wife’s lover, come to steal her away.

While the first scene in London falls a little flat and is much lighter on laughs than what follows, the scenes in Bucks hit the right note from the first marmalade joke. This is partly due to Kendal’s comic timing, but also because Ayckbourn is able to mine much richer seams from the relationship of a long-married, long-suffering couple than a young, optimistic one. While the older couple gets the majority of the laughs, the younger illustrates for us the social changes of the 60s. For the first time in British history, women were able to have sex before marriage without being shamed into social exclusion, and Kara Tointon portrays Ginny as a confident young woman out to get what she wants from life – a character in direct contrast to Kendal’s Sheila who lays out her husband’s clothes and cleans the bath out after him.

Despite everyone (bar Greg) being overly reliant on deception as a means of self-preservation, Ayckbourn’s play is, at its heart, a warm-hearted and affectionate one, in which the tensions of married life in middle-class middle England are made fun of ever so gently. This makes for a fun and pleasant evening’s entertainment, if not quite an earth-shattering one. 

★★★★★

Nichola Daunton

Relatively Speaking is at Wyndham’s Theatre until 31st August 2013. For further information or to book visit the show’s website here.

Related Itemsreview

More in Theatre

Beauty and the Beast: The Musical at London Palladium

★★★★★
Cristiana Ferrauti
Read More

Evelyn at Southwark Playhouse

★★★★★
Jim Compton-Hall
Read More

Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World at Theatre Royal Stratford East

★★★★★
Natallia Pearmain
Read More

King Lear at Shakespeare’s Globe

★★★★★
Michael Higgs
Read More

This Is Not Who I Am/Rapture at the Royal Court Theatre

★★★★★
Jessica Wall
Read More

“Flamenco is a race where there is no end – you never stop learning”: An interview with Manuel Liñán on ¡Viva! at the Sadler’s Wells Flamenco Festival 2022

Jessica Wall
Read More

Jitney at the Old Vic

★★★★★
Jonathan Marshall
Read More

“The fact a play as relevant as Jitney is not known outside of the US is criminal”: An interview with Sule Rimi on starring in August Wilson’s Jitney at the Old Vic

Jonathan Marshall
Read More

The Car Man at the Royal Albert Hall

★★★★★
Jim Compton-Hall
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap
  • Popular

  • Latest

  • TOP PICKS

  • Ed Sheeran at Wembley Stadium
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • Eagles bring a nostalgia-laden evening to the BST Festival in Hyde Park
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • Africa Fashion at the V&A
    ★★★★★
    Art
  • “He used to spit at the audience, roll on the ground, he did, in fact, hump that plastic dog – he was the original punk rocker”: Baz Luhrman, Tom Hanks, Austin Butler, Olivia DeJonge and Alton Mason on Elvis
    Cinema & Tv
  • The Princess
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Beauty and the Beast: The Musical at London Palladium
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • The Terminal List
    ★★★★★
    amazon
  • Baymax!
    ★★★★★
    disney
  • St Vincent at the Hammersmith Apollo
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • Beauty and the Beast: The Musical at London Palladium
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • St Vincent at the Hammersmith Apollo
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • Netflix Walking Tour: From Bridgerton to The Crown, a free walking tour through the filming locations
    Cinema & Tv
  • Africa Fashion at the V&A
    ★★★★★
    Art
  • Minions: The Rise of Gru
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
The Upcoming
Pages
  • Contact us
  • Join mailing list
  • Join us
  • Our London food map
  • Our writers
  • Support us
  • What, when, why
With the support from:
International driving license

Copyright © 2011-2020 FL Media

Limbo wows with a cabaret performance at London Wonderground | Theatre review
Propaganda: Power and Persuasion at the British Library | Exhibition review