Theatre in Review: Neighbourhood Watch (Stephen Joseph Theatre/59E59)

	Terence Booth. Photo: Karl Andre Photography

It's a truism that the vision of Alan Ayckbourn -- originally a purveyor of light comedies- -- has darkened considerably over time. Certainly few are as deliciously dark as Neighbourhood Watch, which begins with the dedication of a park to a slain community hero, then flashes back to unfurl a farcical tale marked by most of the seven deadly sins, chief among them lust and pride. Taking note of the adage that no good deed goes unpunished, Ayckbourn rewrites it, suggesting that no good deed fails to unleash a tide of comic chaos and destruction.

Speaking at the dedication is Hilda, a middle-aged woman of spinsterly aspect; the park is being dedicated to her brother, Martin. In typical Ayckbourn fashion, Hilda's speech, a stilted affair written on note cards, turns into a stream of unintended revelations about their troubled childhoods and stifling intimacy. Near the end, she speaks with Eva Peron-like intensity, saying, "With the Bluebell Hill Development Neighbourhood Watch Scheme, Martin laid down his blueprint, his dream, his plan for a better world," she says.

The action switches to four months earlier, when Hilda and Martin, newly arrived in Bluebell Hill, hold a housewarming for their new neighbors. Among them is Dorothy, a depressive retiree in her early '60s, her face wreathed in disappointment. There's also Rod, formerly in the security service and a prophet of doom, warning that Britain is in imminent danger of being done away with by immigrants and "yobbos."(The local council estate, he says, is "a cesspool. All the local scum gathered down there. Drugs, violence...incest.") And there's Gareth, a sad sack who, having lost his job in engineering, tinkers away in his shed while Amy, his much younger wife, makes her way through the local husbands. Currently, she's entangled with Luther, Hilda and Martin's next-door neighbor, a sinister sort who abuses his wife, a weak-willed music teacher named Magda.

Hilda and Martin get into the world-improvement business after a pair of incidents convinces them that there are barbarians at their gate. First, Martin becomes embroiled in a fracas with what he thinks is a young trespasser, but it turns out to be an innocent misunderstanding - leaving him open to charges of pedophilia and assault. Then Martin's beloved garden gnome -- a treasured childhood relic -- is hurled through the window, irreparably shattered. To restore order to Bluebell Hill, the siblings organize a neighborhood association.

With the assent of a majority of the community, the association erects a security fence -- complete with razor wire -- around the perimeter, issues identity cards, and erects stocks, for the punishment of offenders, in the center of the traffic roundabout. Not satisfied with having established a mini-police state, an effort that gets them approving coverage in the Daily Mail, they go further, snooping into private lives, siccing the local toughs on potential lawbreakers for "a friendly word," and unleashing acts of battery and arson. Further complicating matters are Martin's clandestine affair with the predatory Amy, and Hilda's determination to save Magda from Luther --- at any cost.

Domestic abuse, closeted homosexuality, vigilante justice -- these are the sour fruits of Bluebell Hill's new Eden, all of them detailed by Ayckbourn, with his gift for pushing situations to their logical extremes and his faultless ear for everyday remarks freighted with disappointment and suppressed desire. Although British to the core, the play's portrait of self-appointed guardians of the peace, who live to police community morals, will seem alarmingly on the money to most Americans in the audience.

The playwright, acting as his own director, has assembled a cast perfectly in tune with the matter-of-fact horror inside the laughter. Alexandra Mathie's Hilda is the very model of a compassionate do-gooder, unconsciously driven by rage and disappointment, and not above a little tarring and feathering when she feels it is required. Giggly and tentative one minute -- she and Martin share a sense of humor that never quite made it out of the nursery -- she can turn on a dime, paralyzing a social miscreant with a Medusa-like stare. Mathew Cottle's Martin is a cheerful, ineffectual sort, stunned to find himself turning into a benign dictator and late-blooming lothario. Also fine are Eileen Battye as Dorothy, who blossoms under her new responsibilities as the group's press director, fielding messages from newspapers all over Britain; Terence Booth as Rod, always primed to jump into a defensive position, karate hands at the ready; Richard Derrington as Gareth, who sublimates his marital disappointment into a fascination with restraining devices (his scholarly discussion of the difference between a stock and a pillory is especially amusing); and Frances Grey as Amy, on the prowl in tiny, skin-tight dresses and a cherry-red wig. In a class by herself is Amy Loughton's Magda, who, in a show-stopping monologue, recounts the lifetime of self-hatred that has led her to a loveless, abusive marriage.

The production, from the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, England (Ayckbourn's home base) clearly has been built to tour, but it's effective, for all of that. Pip Leckenby's setting features a pair of curved sofas around an amusing circular fake fireplace, which lights up at the flip of a switch; it's probably a blessing that we don't see the rest of the room's décor, chosen by Hilda, which is apparently a riot of hideous wallpaper and pixie green accents. (Amy comments on it raucously, earning Hilda's enmity forever.) Leckenby's costumes are accurate to the characters, and they become really amusing in Act II, when the men's outfits begin taking on military appurtenances. Mick Hughes' lighting includes some well-done fire effects during the climax. No sound designer is credited, although someone is surely responsible for the brass processional music between scenes and for such effects as shattering glass and police sirens.

At the end, the action returns to the memorial service for the uproarious unveiling of a most unexpected tribute to Martin's life. It's a typically Ayckbourn moment, a gasp-inducing gag in a comedy that uses laughter as a kind of shock therapy. --David Barbour