Are you happy? Walking away from the Playhouse on Thursday, neither my co-editor nor I knew the answer.
No, we weren’t having an existential crisis, but the characters in Aykbourn’s Living Together certainly were. Were they happy in the end? After all the shit they go through, one certainly hopes so. Not that it wasn’t very funny and at times very touching, but what an ordeal took place for our entertainment. Some people get along, some people don’t. In the family shack, there is no escape: from one another but also from oneself.
These characters seem to have a lot to escape from. Comprised of three couples, each repre- sents the worst relationship extremes. Annie and Tom represent tedious stasis. Norman and Ruth seem to be more volatile than an English student with a chemistry set. Meanwhile, Reg and Sarah seem to be the archetypal submissive coward and insufferable bitch set-up, but on steroids. With everybody so unhealthily invested in each other, it’s perhaps no surprise that each of the characters’ flaws emerges in the drama between everybody else.
In the grand mess, Annie is the most vulnerable. Prime among her exploiters is the philandering Norman. Norman shows up to the family home with the noble intent of a weekend elopement. Annie’s cowardly brother and his insufferable wife promptly arrive as her replacement. But inevitably things start getting complicated when Norman gets drunk and Sarah spontaneously chucks a plate of biscuits at Reg.
We get laughter, tears and an uneasy feeling as we realise that the drama feels somehow familiar. Living Together is if nothing else a heightened version of the family sagas many of us live through and will probably live again.
Making something so everyday, so believable is not as easy as it sounds. Mixing the streaks of comic absurdism with the otherwise on point realism is a tough balancing act, one which is maintained almost impeccably throughout the performance.
During their rehearsal period, the stage world was teased with rumors of improv done in pubs and scriptless rehearsals. Whatever voodoo it was directors Griffith Rees and Laura Cull performed in these pubs, it has worked a treat on their actors. Norman (Freddie Bowerman) plays on the one hand a comic book caricature of a romantic who is nonetheless utterly believable as a personage.
Annie’s (Lizzy Mansfield) sense of grounded reasonableness anchors the chaos while still being an enigmatic and fascinating character. Sarah (Sarah Mathews) is just plain terrifying, the sort of future spouse that people have nightmares about. All the while we despair for the wonderfully affable Reg (James Aldred) for ending up with this monster. Likewise, Ruth (Mary Higgins) has her cross to bear in the form of Norman. Higgins handles excellently the dual aspect of being on the one hand a strong independent woman but also one hopelessly bound to a man. Yet the question remains; are they happy?
