Consuming Passions at the Corpus Playroom
Review by Nick Warburton
Alan Ayckbourn has written a number of plays in which time moves in peculiar ways. Consuming Passions (his eightieth) is a relatively recent excursion. Its intriguing premise is that a woman in a restaurant (Melanie) finds herself simultaneously in the present and the future. What she learns about the future drives the plot. What we learn about her throws up a question which, in the end, we’re left to answer for ourselves: has Melanie stumbled on the planning of a murder, or is she being deceived by her own fervid imagination?
This is Ayckbourn, so the hidden passions, the foibles and failings of the characters are his real concern. It’s what makes them so funny and, at times, so recognisably sad. In playing them an actor must be aware of the hidden sadness as well as the opportunities for comedy. Time after time, we catch ourselves, as audience members, simultaneously laughing and sympathising, caught, rather like Melanie, between two states.
This enjoyable production, deftly directed by Colin Lawrence for Bawds, moved at a pace – there was a cracking fight when Melanie was ejected from the restaurant in the second scene – and was also full of telling detail.
The cast was uniformly excellent with good work from the murder plot trio – Lindsey McAuley as the provocative, double-dealing (or was she?) Cora; Tim Drummond as her flash but dim lover (or was he?) Freddy; and Guy Holmes as the world-weary, high-powered businessman/murder victim (or was he?) Cedric. All three were convincing and entertaining. Barry Brown was nimbly on and off as a pair of sweet and sour waiters; they had little in common with each other, except that they were both funny. Peter Dodds also got the most out of Edmund, the superior waiter at the classier of the two restaurants; not only was he superior to all other waiters, he was also, we felt, superior to all his customers. And we had a delightful cameo from Tom Orton as the sweet-natured, tea-obsessed policeman. There was also an uncredited, unseen and convincingly troublesome drunk who interrupted proceedings in the police station.
Holding all this together was Mandi Cattell as Melanie. Mandi is one of our most believable actors and here she played the frantic anxiety of Melanie with the right degree of suggestion at the turmoil beneath the surface – the consuming passion of the title. This was expertly done.
As always with Bawds, a fine production team provided excellent support – a set (by Barry Brown) that neatly and without fuss placed us in each location; lighting and sound (Mark Easterfield and Martin Avery) that added to the atmosphere with subtlety.Ayckbourn said of this play, “It’s all a bit The Twilight Zone and quite fun.” In the hands of Bawds, it was both: entertainingly Zone-ish and most definitely fun.