Life of Riley

As always with Alan Ayckbourn, the setting – four corners of the stage as four very different gardens – reflects the class, status and temperaments of a clutch of suburban married couples in varying degrees of crisis. As so often, the scale of his characters' passions is gauged to fit the contours of their middle-class, middle-aged lives, hedged about by embarrassments, incoherences, repressions and seeping secrets. As ever, the dialogue is… but, hang on, this isn't simply a familiar Ayckbourn exchange of banal conversation about marmalade cleverly communicating chills of marital stagnation; it's a dialogue from Relatively Speaking , his 1965 hit (and first of many punning titles). In Life of Riley , his 74th play, the characters fatefully involve their fun-loving, non-conforming friend George Riley in their am-dram Ayckbourn, hoping it will distract him from news that cancer leaves him just six months to live. Although, like Beckett's Godot , Riley never appears, the ripples of his existence perturb the marriages of those closest to him. Masterfully crafted, well acted, ultimately touching, but a vital spark, like the titular hero, is absent.