Scoop Review: The Birthday Boy at Circa

Carl Nixon’s play The Birthday Boy at Circa is a charming comedy of manners, and there is much to smile, snigger and laugh out loud about. Be warned though, the ending is not entirely happy.

There are many birthdays for the boys in The Birthday Boy, after all it spans 25 years. There was even a happy birthday sung to a boy in the audience.

The play begins with David blindfolded in preparation for the unveiling of his fortieth birthday surprise. Stuart, who is testing the blindfold, is David’s best friend. They have been friends since an escapade in the chemistry lab when they were at school. With their wives Kathy and Elisabeth they are two happy couples sharing birthday celebrations and holiday adventures.

It is remarkable, and a credit to the direction of Jane Waddell, that these characters are so thoroughly believable. They are well matched both as couples and as a foursome. Peter Hambleton as birthday boy and Geraldine Brophy as his loving if distrait wife Kathy, are nervous as they rustle up the courage to tell the Marshalls that they will not be joining them on the scuba diving trip booked for this October because their baby is due about then. This is the bombshell that introduces the play’s central theme.

Phil Vaughan as the impish best friend Stuart and Jude Gibson as his brittle, elegant wife Elizabeth are not altogether thrilled for the happy couple and the bombshell news raises issues for their own relationship. Hadn’t they all been determined that children were not for them? It seems not. Body clocks have been ticking loudly for Kathy. Elizabeth thought that she and Stuart were sharing a firm resolution not to have children. And now Stuart is not so sure, there is a scene on their ingenious pulled out bed where they explore their parental roles with a folded jacket playing their imaginary daughter Rose. Elizabeth remains adamant, and Stuart left alone sadly unfolds Rose and gently hangs her on the back of a chair.

The essence of the play is the profound changes that these decisions about children make to us all. By the end of the play 25 years later only one of the marriages is intact, and the mates are mates no longer, but it must be said, the children are joyfully thriving.

As time jerks its way into the future there are twin brothers for Dougal Williams and right little terrors they are too. Kathy has an international career she finds more important that the needs of her family, grandma Rita played by Donna Akersten with modern grandmotherly style is established as live in help for poor old David.

Visually the production is a triumph. Andrew Foster’s set is constructed of three flat architectural panels. Vivid, dramatic, and always relevant, lighting, sign writing and screens amongst the panels effect the changes from different houses, to a resort, to an airport terminal. Pleasingly slick, and enhancing the action, it is an exciting piece of theatre design. Costume designer, Emma Ransley has achieved her task with admirable coherence. Geraldine Brophy’s Kathy is gorgeous in drifts of pale silk, and a distraught new mother in dressing gown and tousled curls. Jude Gibson’s Elizabeth is all tidy, fitted, ambitious style becoming more and more expensive as success takes her further and further from empathy. And then there is Donna Akersten’s lovely unstereotypical soft casual grandmother running the vacuum in headgear reminiscent of Carmen Miranda.

The two old chums with their shiny heads and developing bellies relate well to each other, they are a well-matched pair, it’s obvious they have been friends for more than twenty years. The women have a more wary relationship. Jude Gibson’s characteristic high-heeled prowl on the perimeter works well to emphasise the contrast with Geraldine Brophy’s sham earth mother image.

And this leads to the satirical reversal of traditional roles. The blokes do not rule the world. It is the father rather than the mother who is left holding the babies and complaining about the limits this places on horizons and it is the non-father who is the irresponsible fun-loving weekend visitor.

There are spontaneous laugh aloud exchanges throughout the play. A treatise on the place of mothers in the lives of their adult children is an hilarious case in point.

Five believable characters in great costumes, a gloriously slick clever set with dramatic lighting, laughs, sniggers, wit and jokes and a plot with a salutary point, what more could you ask for. The Birthday Boy at Circa is a winner.

ends

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