Absurd Person Singular: A rewarding response to the play by that canny ringmaster John P. Kelly.
Photo: David Pasho
In many ways, this is a sterling 40th anniversary production of one of Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s best and funniest plays. Despite one regrettable error in judgment, it’s rewarding to see the way in which that canny ringmaster, director John P. Kelly, responds to the demands posed by Absurd Person Singular. In chronicling the fortunes and misfortunes of three painfully disparate couples over three consecutive Christmases, Kelly certainly delivers on the comedy, but never at the expense of the inner darkness and desolation which tinges Ayckbourn’s portrait of a society and class system in convulsion.