Close window 2 JUNE 2005

Theatre Improbable Fiction Stephen Joseph, Scarborough SAM MARLOW

EXTRACT THIS year marks the Stephen Joseph Theatre’s 50th anniversary, and with it comes its tireless artistic director’s 69th play. ... True to authorial form, Improbable Fiction has wit, a clever conceit and some spot-on social comedy. ... Bumbling, good-hearted Arnold is the chairman of a rural writing group. His own literary ambitions are scant — he’s a copywriter who produces instruction manuals — but he gamely tries to chivvy the group’s ill-assorted would-be authors into creative productivity. Grace, a bird-like downtrodden wife, Jess, a vinegary lesbian farmer, bullying retired teacher Brevis, Vivvi, a vain, simpering journalist and Clem the sci-fi nerd all gather at Arnold’s home for their last meeting before Christmas, while upstairs Ilsa, the pretty home help, takes care of Arnold’s bedridden mother. The session over, the group disperse into the freezing night — but as they go, a violent electrical storm breaks out. Frankenstein-like, Arnold has created a monster; his encouraging words, coupled with the wild weather, have sparked the group members’ imaginations, and his house is suddenly invaded by characters from their various fictions. Acykbourn neatly parodies various novelistic styles — Jess’s overheated Gothic Victorian romance, Clem’s alien- abduction yarn, Vivvi’s 1930s whodunnit — and the premise gives the cast licence to throw themselves with over-the-top abandon into a whirling array of roles, while John Branwell’s Arnold supplies a stolid centrepiece of dumpy bemusement. And you could read the play’s second half as a debate about the nature of truth and originality in art. ... (in an earlier scene) ... a protracted sequence in which a tremblingly nervous Ilsa serves coffee to this sorry selection of artists manqués is masterly — with all the silent, snail’s pace solemnity of a Japanese tea ceremony, but none of the grace, it’s both comic and excruciating.