by Alan Ayckbourn
seen at the Old Vic on 7 February 2018
The play, directed by Annabel Bolton, features Erin Doherty as Soween and Jake Davies as her brother Elihu, with a supporting cast of eleven, and a choir with a small orchestra (music by Christopher Nightingale). It is designed by Laura Hopkins and lit by David Plater.
When I bought the tickets, it was for a two-part production to be seen in the afternoon and evening (this was how it had been presented at last year's Edinburgh Festival). Later I had an email informing me that there would be only one part. Shortly before my attendance the now-customary email giving performance details mentioned a running time of four hours and 5 minutes. By the time I reached the theatre the running time was three hours and 45 minutes. Was I to see only unsatisfactory chunks of the original work? Or was it so much a work-in-progress that it would prove still to have too much padding? Ayckbourn has in the past been a master at complex narratives spanning more than the usual performance time - for example The Norman Conquests, three plays covering the same weekend in the dining room, the living room and the garden of a house; or, even more ambitiously, House and Garden, two plays to be performed by the same cast simultaneously on adjoining stages, requiring the audience to attend twice to perceive the technical brilliance of the stage-craft. Had something gone wrong with The Divide?
