Alarms and Excursions

I’m glad I am not the only one that occasionally falls foul of modern technology. The characters in “Alarms and Excursions” had a difficult time with smoke and car alarms and even high-tech bottle openers ganging up on them. Not just gadgets with batteries or plugs entered the fray but the whole of modern life awaited their futile attempts to get past.

Frayn’s script requires razor-sharp timing not only from performers but also sound and lighting and I would especially like to congratulate Mark Jennings for an excellent job, there were many cues – all spot on (no pun intended!). Scenery and sets were simple, the most complex of which was two identical hotel bedrooms.

Imagine you are at a dinner party where there is an annoying beep and you have no idea where it is coming from, then an oven timer buzzing and a car alarm sounding; or the awkward complications and dissatisfactions of holidaying in a variety of hotels on a daily basis with two very different couples in identical hotel rooms; or you are stuck at an airport waiting for a lift and can only get through to an answerphone. These are just three scenarios of the eight ‘playlets’ that make up Michael Frayn’s “Alarms and Excursions”. Each set varied in length (I thought ‘Doubles’ went on a bit too long!) some with no dialogue at all, just reactions to a speaker or flight instructions. The funniest of which was ‘Toasters’ with three employees trying to do the right thing, like clapping, drinking toasts and going through a bundle of papers while listening to the chairman’s speech. Full of visual comedy. It is in ‘Immobiles’, that it seems Director Martin Pickering might have had the most fun, where the simple task of picking up a foreign friend from an airport ends in isolation, obstruction, arrest and assault – all thanks to a series of missed calls. By the end, the characters further enmesh themselves in a sticky web of their own accidental creation. It’s a chaos that would be easily remedied today by a few mobile phones but the anguish caused is as contemporary as it ever was.

The seven actors: Cheryl DeBie; Margaret Bown; Lee Cogger; Nick Noakes; Martin Pickering; Jean Bentley and Lindsey Hudson, playing a variety of roles, all worked well together. Martin Pickering and his team can be pleased with the results as an enjoyable time was had by all. Oh yes – not one single mobile phone rang during the entire performance! 

© NODA CIO. All rights reserved.