Talk in this play, all about mistaken identities and misunderstood motives, of going to church, or rather not going to church, reminded me of a very well-known story about ‘the WC’. A woman was looking for accommodation. She enlisted the help of a local village schoolmaster to help her. They found somewhere suitable. But later, when she got home, she recalled she hadn’t noticed whether the room she wanted had an en suite bathroom. So, she wrote to the schoolmaster asking to confirm if there was a WC. But the schoolmaster didn’t know what was meant by ‘WC’, so he asked the vicar. Various versions of the story conclude the vicar thought it either meant (amongst other versions) Wayside Church, Welsh Church or Wesleyan Church. Sometimes ‘chapel’ is substituted for ‘church’. In all the versions, this prompted a long reply from the schoolmaster telling the lady that the WC has a capacity of 229 (the actual capacity varies between versions) and that his daughter was married in the WC, and so on and so forth.
Set in London and Buckinghamshire in June 1967, the vocabulary in the play is of its time – some people in the audience at the performance I attended found the putdowns from one character to another to be amusing, whilst others thought they were more unpleasant than funny, and others were unoffended but thought they were also unfunny. There’s some talk of money in pre-decimalisation terms, and the production is at pains in other ways to portray the play as being a 1960s story, as opposed to a 1970s or 1980s one, by displaying posters of The Beatles and, um, bands lesser than The Beatles (you can tell my notebook stayed in my bag for the entire show), and playing music from the era before the show, at the interval, at each scene change, and at curtain call.
This production uses an in-the-round setting, which I didn’t think was strictly necessary, but it achieves what most in-the-round settings set out to do, which is provide as much of the audience as possible with a greater feeling of being close to the action than a more traditional seating style would. I didn’t feel disadvantaged in terms of sightlines from my vantage point, which bearing in mind there’s no stage revolve and the set stays in place for each act (I quite liked having two intervals), is quite an achievement.
There’s an eerily familiar feel to the ghost phone calls that Greg (Adam Keenan) receives at the start of the show – when there is no answer from a repeat caller, it seems some things have remained unchanged from a generation ago, even if we have the benefit of caller ID these days. The director’s note in the programme has an amusing story about the younger actors learning how to ‘use’ a rotary telephone.
The subject matter is not meant to be particularly amusing – older couple Philip (Robert Seatter) and Sheila (Helen Walker) are tolerant of one another after decades of married life but one gets the feeling that had the play been written and set in 2025 they might well have called it a day, and therefore the story might have been about them splitting up just as Greg and Ginny (Emily Sanctuary) were planning on getting hitched. As it is, the show ends up being a lot of fun, with the setup once the action shifts out of London and into Buckinghamshire flowing very naturally: not everyone knows who everyone is, so the introductions are for the audience as well as for the characters. In the incomings and outgoings, not everyone hears everything, leaving the audience more knowledgeable than any one character. A lively revival of a popular period piece of theatre.
Review by Chris Omaweng
It’s the 60s, and in her tiny bedsit, Ginny and Greg are rapturously in love. Greg has decided it is the right moment to pop the question, so when Ginny announces she’s off to visit her parents, he sees it as the perfect opportunity to dash there first and ask her Dad’s permission. Off he goes to Buckinghamshire where he finds Philip and Sheila enjoying a peaceful Sunday morning breakfast in the garden.
But the only thing is – they’re not Ginny’s parents.
The play that made Ayckbourn’s name is a classic English comedy of mistaken identities and excruciating misunderstandings.
Greg – Adam Keenan
Ginny – Emily Sanctuary
Sheila – Helen Walker
Philip – Robert Seatter
Director – Anne Neville
Assistant Director – Guy Smith
Set Designer – Juliette Demoulin
Costume Designer – Jenny Richardson
Lighting Designer – Emma Hunt
Sound Designer/Operator – Chloe Park
RELATIVELY SPEAKING
By Alan Ayckbourn
The Questors Theatre
9 to 17 May (not 12 May) 2025
