Surprises review, Minerva

Alan Ayckbourn directs his new work, Surprises, a back-to-the-future what-if about the price and the nature of love. It opens with a ghastly sixteen-year-old, Grace, played by a small woman who looks and sounds 40, rowing with Daddy who it transpires is 69 but also looks 40. We are in a time where people live well beyond 100 but age very slowly. Apart from that little has changed - daughters date men their fathers disapprove of and marriages break down.

 Love machine

The three acts are all connected by Grace's boyfriend/husband Titus who time travels to her bedroom in Act One and sets in train changes that affect their story through Acts Two and Three. The biggest surprise is that they're the least interesting and believable characters in this rather dull and pointless trilogy at Chichester's Minerva Theatre. That said, the second act in which we meet the father's lawyer, Lorraine, and her ditzy assistant, Sylvia, and the android with a heart, Jan, is a corker. Ironic and insane, it is a master class in script and acting control.

Sarah Parks, Laura Doddington and Richard Stacey's second act performances keep us in place for a brave but highly messy third act in which even a master of comedy and technology struggles to dramatise two lonely people getting it off in a bar through their online avatars in Second Life. For those who don't know about sites like Second Life, there is at least a tiny element of surprise.

In conclusion: Surprises is in rep with Absurd Person Singular which always goes down well, but it's unlucky that a comedy classic set around three couples dining together over successive Christmases, is playing during a heatwave.

References
Fiona Mountford review in The Evening Standard