Bill Champion and Kim Wall        Photos by Andrew Higgens

by Eugene Paul

Sitting in front of me were two breathlessly beautiful, makeup free girls, the older one, at least sixteen, extravagantly overdressed, advising her younger companion from her copious notes.  Students, I thought.  How wise, how even brilliant of their teacher to have sent them to Ayckbourn.  Everybody who works in Theater should ponder Ayckbourn. How crystal clear the lessons and the pleasures in his Arrivals & Departures. In fact, one might even sit back and enjoy without a clue the head noddingly instructive felicities before us. My companion decided to stretch a bit and peek at the copious notes. It seemed that they were even greater at hand felicities in the wonderful compendium of Ayckbourn quotes in the program.  Clever girls.

Arrivals & Departures starts off with a bang. Ayckbourn’s heaven sent repertory ensemble – they do all the plays in this special series of premieres –are in designer Jan Bee Brown’s utterly simple, utterly effective corner of a railway station, all of them disguised, members of the SSDO, rehearsing to capture alive  a terrorist who will arrive by train in sixty-five minutes.  In charge is their officer, Quentin (Bill Champion) who is officiously whipping them through another rehearsal to appear perfectly natural.  Things are not going too well.  Oh, SSDO? Well, that stands for Strategic Simulated Distractional Operations, doesn’t it…?

Quentins’s rehearsals are interrupted with the arrival by helicopter of key witness Barry (Kim Wall) a traffic warden who actually knows just what the terrorist looks like, having recently given him a ticket.  Further interruption: a very surly young soldier, Ez (Elizabeth Boag) who has been sent to guard Barry in this very ticklish situation. Quentin, his authority frazzled, tries harder.  They are all to look for the terrorist who is wearing a red and white anorak. Hmmm, we wonder.  Barry is wearing a red and white baseball cap, which he removes and puts in his pocket.  Aha… And…Ez has a black back pack which she installs under the railway seating in their waiting room.  Hmmm…Maybe things are not so simple after all…Ayckbourn, playwright and director, has set us up.

Elizabeth Boag and Kim Wall  .

Railway stations.  How many times in our lives have they been the scenes of the tensions of arrivals, the tensions of  departures at different points in our lives.  We might even measure the highs and lows in our lives by them. As they wait for the approaching train and terrorist, the memories of Ez, grim Ez, play out, her thoughts inevitably stimulated by the factor of where she is.  And we learn what makes her tick, but no one else can know. Little Esme, whose soldier father has been killed when she is tiny, Esme and her impossible mother.  And that boy friend of the mother.  Beautiful Esme rebellious.  Beautiful Esme raped.  Enraged Esme attacked by the parents of her rapist, who want her unborn child.  And we know how vulnerable Esme became tough Ez but Quentin doesn’t, nor his team,, nor Barry.

And none of this to do with a terrorist? Why, then?  Ayckbourn has written 78 plays in his 75 years, seen more performances of his work done than any other British playwright save Shakespeare.  What is he doing to us?  The clock runs down, the train arrives, a man in a red and white anorak runs through and is captured.  Quentin, the pompous is elated.  But garrulous, merry Barry says it’s the wrong man.  Ayckbourn has his first act curtain and the hook is still in us.  We are more certain than ever of how clever we are.

Act Two is mirror image repeat of Act one, positions reversed, our puzzlement heightened but we’re still sure we know what will be will be.  Yet, this time through, it’s not Ez’s memories we are privy to, it’s those of Barry, whose railway experiences over his life are quite, quite different, enough to drive you mad, enough to make you vengeful. Unless you were the gentle soul that is Barry.  But again, we’re too clever, we watchers of Ayckbourn’s machinations. We cannot help responding to his troubling mixture of laughter and satire in the midst of pathos.  Or is it pathos in the midst of laughter? What happens this time when the man in the red and white anorak is captured?

The surprise is genuine when we find we are wrong. The emotional response is complicated, more than we anticipated. Ayckbourn is far better.  We should have known. What we saw as clever staging, clever writing, clever performing was far more cunning, more than dramatic, human.  The seemingly simple proven deeper. Those students – and we – have learned a valuable lesson.  And enjoyed  every minute of it. Can‘t wait for the other Ayckbourn plays in this rep cycle.

Arrivals & Departures. At 59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59^th Street, near Park Ave. Tickets: $70. 212-279-4200 or 59e59.org. Thru June 29.