Oxford Playhouse

Monday 8th – Saturday 13th February

“characters attempted to entertain Winnie with their jokes and life stories, however, like Winnie, I quickly lost interest.” Nick Dalbey ★★★★★

“Alan Ayckborn has written more plays than his years. And at seventy years old, My Wonderful Day, his 73^rdfull length play, has the intense quality of an ancient malt, or an aged Christmas cake. It is the most delicious of plays, but it is not new to the literary palette.” Martin Parlett ★★★★★

My Wonderful Day ★★★★★

Review by Nick Dalbey

While the title of the play, “My Wonderful Day,” seems cheering, the events which follow fall short of wonderful. “My Wonderful Day” is a sincere play about people. While certain scenes lacked the enthusiasm necessary to carry the viewer along, it nevertheless kept you thinking. As the events unfold, the plot slowly becomes more complicated and the audience learns more of each character’s history and emotional troubles.

From the beginning of the play, the audience, along with eight year old Winnie, is caught up in a fast paced adult world. The entirety of the play takes place in a single house where Winnie’s pregnant mother is the hired cleaning lady. The lighting designer, Mike Hughes, does an excellent job portraying the different aspects of the house with various lighting techniques. Without changing too many props, the stage lighting effectively creates different spaces in which the audience becomes convinced that the characters have actually moved to a different room of the house.

Using simple props and few colors, the stage acquires the feeling of a large room. Set against the stages black and silver coloring, the actors’ brightly colored costumes contrast nicely with the stage. One becomes acutely aware of a character’s presence and less concerned about the space in which he/she is moving.

Within each room, new characters are both introduced and reveal the complexity of their own life. However, it was in these moments that the pacing of the play seems to slow down and lose its momentum. Throughout the play, Winnie either remains very quiet or speaks French. Therefore, when each character attempts to interact with Winnie, most of the interaction lies heavily upon the charm and energy of the particular actor. Both Paul Kemp (Josh) and Ruth Gibson (Tiffany) seemed to struggle, in their scenes with Winnie, to keep the audience engaged. Both characters attempted to entertain Winnie with their jokes and life stories, however, like Winnie, I quickly lost interest. Josh’s jokes became tiresome and Tiffany’s ditzy personality became overbearing.

The true virtue of the play lies in its story. While actors may struggle to convey certain aspects and nuances of particular scenes, the story of Winnie continues to keep you thinking. Through the eyes of an eight year old girl, the play leads the audience through a series of events in which one can see both the humor and tragedy of life. Holding the two in tension, the story invites the viewer to ponder and laugh at our human foibles as we experience them on a daily basis.

My Wonderful Day ★★★★★

Review by Martin Parlett

Alan Ayckborn has written more plays than his years. And at seventy years old, My Wonderful Day, his 73^rd full length play, has the intense quality of an ancient malt, or an aged Christmas cake. It is the most delicious of plays, but it is not new to the literary palette. Nine year old Winnie unashamedly feigns illness for a day off school, and so is forced to accompany her pregnant mother Laverne who is cleaning the plush residence of Trevor and Paula Tate, a television personality, and Bafta award winning director.  Winnie is encouraged to sit quietly and complete her overdue homework assignment – to write about her day. The truant couldn’t have hoped for a more eventful, and dysfunctional source of inspiration, as affairs, ‘adult’ DVDs, paternal outpourings and breaking waters, are silently and dutifully pencilled in Winnie’s notebook.

The production follows a tradition of a number of child-centric narrations – Henry James’ What Maisie Knew, in which a young girl narrates the experience of a broken marriage is strikingly relevant, and the popularity of Sophie’s World, a philosophical conversation-journey of a fourteen year old girl demonstrates the ability for young protagonists to deliver adult material. In the case of My Wonderful Day it is ingeniously suggested that the play itself is the content of Winnie’s notebook; that is, we are not viewing the action as it happens, but stepping into the metatheatricality of Winnie’s homework piece, told entirely from her perspective. Winnie is never off stage – an omniscient minute-taker – and this is a good thing, as Ayesha Antoine – though often mute or speaking broken French – keeps this play bobbing along nicely. I am still reeling from the post-performance revelation that Antoine is twenty-eight years old – three times the age of her character. This dissimulation is a streak of genius on the part of Ayckbourn; even he couldn’t have hoped for such a stellar actress to pull off the innocent disbelief and the pre-teen mannerisms of Winnie with such enviable perfection. There is a certain luxuriousness in being deceived so well.

Unfortunately the muses of Winnie’s creation – the orbital characters of Tiffany and Josh in particular, struggle to find their puddle when so much thunder is taken by the enigmatic child. Josh (Paul Kempe) – a family friend of the Tates – seems to have wandered on stage from a Harry Enfield sketch, and his breakdown is too obvious a device to counter the distance of Winnie’s father. Tiffany (Ruth Gibson) begins as a stock secretary ‘piece of skirt’, but endears herself to us as she assumes a demi-maternal role. Paula (Alexandra Mathie) arrives just in time to let us forgive the slump in energy. Sharp-suited, lacking oestrogen and discovering her husband in bed with the red head, Mathie functions as a kind of moral adjudicator – despite her fearsome skill in bludgeoning with trophies.

As Kevin Tate and Winnie’s mum now occupy two different hospital wards, the play comes to a close. My aching jaw (from perpetual smiling) is given some respite. However this final scene is almost an echo of Puccini, with a hospital bed taking centre stage – and the newborn baby is ominously absent. Thankfully, Ayckburn is too merciful to allow tragedy to infiltrate. Unlike Mimi, Laverne and ‘Jericho’ are healthy – and the play begins where it began: mother and daughter in comic interplay with the dream of returning to Martinique.

Unfortunately, Ayckbourn writes far too well for us to bear grudge against the foibles of his actors. In short, it is a bad day for critics, but a wonderful day for theatre.