Last weekend started with MADC’s production of Alan Ayckbourn’s Farcicals – two short comedies of manners about the mild lives of middle-class couples in middle England. And, like everything mentioned thus far, the comedy was middling, at best.

This two-play set is perhaps a little too mild to be executed without a driving focus on pace. Ayckbourn’s plays depend highly on tone, implication, perfect pauses and whiplash responses, and timing is everything. First published in 2019, its current delivery by MADC’s cast and team has made it appear as though it got stuck with a slowing case of long-COVID.

Director Rachel Galea, who is usually an excellent stage manager, had strong peripherals in terms of set, lighting and costume, but her casting choices were rather imbalanced. I found the couple-pairings of Kate de Cesare and Aldo Zammit as Lottie and Teddy Bulbin, and Kim Woods and Gordon A. Watson as Penny and Reggie Bottlecamp, both difficult partnerships in terms of dynamics.

Gordon Watson and Aldo Zammit

The first farce, Chloe with Love was based on the improbable notion that Lottie changes her look and pretends to be a completely different woman to try and rekindle her spark with Teddy.

Quite apart from the fact that even the suspension of disbelief required for such a tenuous scenario is tricky to pull off even in Shakespeare, I was disappointed by Ayckbourn’s rather weak script.

Kate de Cesare as Lottie/Chloe was by far the strongest of the cast of four, with Gordon Watson coming up a close second as the berated and befuddled Reggie.

In British comedies of manners, particularly ones like Ayckbourn’s speed and timing are of the essence

De Cesare’s pace and accent made her character credible and likeable, but while Watson matched her inflections and sounded British (because he is), his pace was just a little bit off.

Kim Woods’s Penny, on the other hand, had better pace but was let down by a forced and consequently weak and wavering Maltese accent desperately trying to take on RP tonalities.

Aldo Zammit as Teddy was equally weak here, but also struggled with pacing which lost the nuances of Ayckbourn’s trade-mark, tongue-in-cheek comments, both as character quips and as cues for his fellow actors.

Gordon Watson, Kate De Cesare, Kim Woods and Aldo Zammit.

Problems with pace and subsequent dynamics continued in the second farce The Kidderminster Affair, which sees Teddy and Lottie’s marriage go from bad to worse as she gets increasingly drunk at a barbecue she and Teddy are hosting for Reggie and Penny. Suspecting Teddy to be having an affair, she does not realise that his tryst in Kidderminster is with Penny, to the blissful oblivion of the trusting Reggie.

The premise here was funnier and more slapstick and Ayckbourn’s script came into its own, but was dragged down by the very weak pace once again. This second half was a little more enjoyable than the first in spite of the imbalanced dynamics.

Farcicals at the Clubrooms serves as a reminder that in British comedies of manners, particularly ones like Ayckbourn’s speed and timing are of the essence; and slipping from this strongly jeopardises the comedic impact of the piece.