Ella is, to be frank, a perfectly dreadful human being — casually bigoted, wantonly unpleasant, the sort of parent who fawns extravagantly over one child and habitually belittles the other.
“Nobody likes her much,” says Raz, her teenage grandson. “Not even my granddad.”
As a dramatic character, though? She’s a monstrous marvel to watch, albeit in your mind’s eye, as she tromps through Alan Ayckbourn’s new audio play, “Anno Domino,” wreaking emotional damage. If you wonder, at the start, why her fluttery daughter, Martha, gets panic attacks before family gatherings, a little time with Ella will clear that question right up.
For all that dysfunction, though, the two-act “Anno Domino” — a lockdown project directed and recorded by Ayckbourn, who plays the several male roles opposite his wife, Heather Stoney, in the female roles — is comfort-food theater.
Such is the nature of Ayckbourn comedies, of course, but there is also something to be said for the appeal right now of a play about a family in rather ordinary disarray. And for the simplicity of closing one’s eyes and listening to a story well told. (The final mix is by Paul Stear.)
The recording, for the Stephen Joseph Theater in Scarborough, England, where Ayckbourn spent decades as artistic director, is available for free online through June 25. There is also a captioned version, free as well, on YouTube. It is the 84th play by Ayckbourn, who at 81 has not performed on a professional stage since 1964, when he and Stoney last acted opposite each other. “Anno Domino” finds them both in fine form.
The play’s catalytic event is the announcement by Ella’s grown-up golden boy, Sam, and his wife, Milly, that they are splitting up — out of sheer boredom with each other after 25 years, they say. For the rest of the family, a cascade of relationship ramifications follows.
The widowed Martha, a nursery-school teacher, instantly fears for the future of her nascent partnership with Craig, a sweet mechanic who is one of what Ella calls “those dubious new men.”
“I think on the whole,” Ella muses to Ben, her grumbly old bear of a husband, “I preferred the old-style male. Like you. Insensitive and inconsiderate, but at least I know where I am with you.”
Or so she has reason to believe, after approximately a thousand years of marriage. She may be mistaken.
“You know,” Ben says, “I was thinning out the lettuces just now, and I had this thought.”
Which, in the annals of quintessentially British lines, is a gleaming specimen — and which he follows with a suggestion about altering the state of their union.
Arriving when so many couples have been forced into spending more one-on-one time than they ever bargained for, “Anno Domino” has a fundamental topicality.
But it’s also a play about stasis and evolution, mistreatment and regret. It’s about entrenched double standards, and the lasting harm that people commit both actively and passively. And it’s about the need to communicate — to rouse compassion, to resist cynicism.
“Keep your trust in human nature,” Ben counsels his grandson, as they garden together. “Don’t be a gullible idiot, but on the other hand, don’t lose it altogether, old chap.”
So this is comfort food, yes, but the nourishing kind.
Anno Domino
Through June 25; sjt.uk.com. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.
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