Alan Ayckbourn’s latest comedy “Absurd Person Singular" at the Criterion is very well designed for popular laughter, technically and verbally, yet has a chilling element which produces a feeling of sadness. His characters, or caricatures, are three married couples who spend three successive Christmas Eves together, party fashion. The action takes place in three different kitchens (it is one of the comedy generators that the gatherings never get going properly in the living room because disaster is always striking in the kitchen).

Jane, house proud to an obsessive degree, her mania for polishing being a highlight, and Sidney, lower middle-class but eager to get into executive ranges; Ronald, somewhat reserved, a bit of a gentleman, and Marion, liking the bottle very much indeed, and a smart woman, and Eva, bent on suicide, and Geoffrey, hearty and light weight; these are the couples whose lives intermingle through their socialising. Sidney is a bit of a worm, a toady: Marion is a snob; the others strike one as being more or less humdrum, though full of quirks and sparks that soon die out. At the parties nothing goes right, but hosts and guests behave as if all is well. In the second act, when Eva is trying every method she can think of to do herself in, the others carry on regardless, which results in some of the best comedy of the evening.

Mr Ayckbourn’s neat, well-turned caricatures never develop. Except superficially, we know little about them. The why and the wherefore behind what each has become remain obscure. In comedy-farce one does not expect deep probing, but Mr Ayckbourn does  have a care beyond immediate effect. One senses this, sometimes sees it, which brings about the chill I have already mentioned. Puppets for fun, yes; yet Mr Ayckbourn is also writing about people. The puppets triumph, which means that there is a sense of half-humanness in the play. Amusing, maybe. Not one of the people in “ Absurd Person Singular" is at all likeable. Eve may be an exception: but we never hear from her apart from her pale-faced doomed-  to-be-abortive attempts on her life. One laughs at the jokes, the antics, hardly at or with the people, for they are not really funny. They appear as vapid, vain, selfish and pitiable.

Mr Ayckbourn writes as well as ever, in the sense that his writing flows and he seems always able to say what he wants to say. I feel, as I did with “Time and Time Again" that he is moving towards something better than his best so far “Relatively Speaking" and “How the Other Half Loves". He is not yet there. When he arrives, I think we shall have a blazing human comedy.
 
“Absurd Person Singular" is superbly directed by Eric Thompson, and there are several performances which should not be missed. Within the limitations of caricature-puppet. Sheila Hancock is magnificent as Marion. Richard Briers' farcical way has so much developed that he gives a thoroughly polished portrayal as Sidney. Bridget Turner follows he brilliant performance in “Time and Time Again” with another brilliant study. And Michael  Aldridge, Anna Calder-Marshal and David Burke are very nicely in the picture.