Alan Ayckbourn's much admired plays are perhaps more commonly expected to be tragi-comedies but "Communicating Doors", the Wilmslow Green Room's second production for their 2010-2011 season, is a scary, time-travelling comedy thriller.
Set in a near dystopian future, it sees a prostitute fleeing for her life through a hotel communicating door only to find herself 20 years in the past. Stalked by a psychopath in the present and in the past, the opportunity to alter the past for the better puts the lives of three women at stake.
The play starts in 2030 in a hotel suite where henchman Julian, played by Bob Stewart, has procured the services of a prostitute for his ailing seventy year old business partner, Reece Welles, played by Simon Caporn. The girl is a dominatrix who goes by the name Poopay Daysir (Sarah Field). As it turns out, Reece doesn't want her for her usual role, but instead needs her to witness a confession and then deliver it into trusted hands. Julian wises up to the fact that Reece is confessing all, so plans to get rid of Poopay.
Poopay escapes through the infamous communicating door and finds herself back in the same hotel room twenty years earlier where she finds Ruella (Jane Newman), Reece's first wife. It's the night Ruella is destined to die at Julian's hands in 2010. It takes a while for the two women to realise there's been a warping of time until yet more time travel takes them back another twenty years to the wedding night of Julian's first wife Jessica (Rhianne Statom-Barnett). The play is amusing with confusion and decent suspense throughout helping to knot things up very nicely.
Poopay, Ruella and Jessica are strong women and who find themselves interdependent on each other for their survival – not only in the present, but also in the future and in the past. Intrigued? You should be.
Expertly directed by Mike Rogerson, the Wilmslow Green Room's versatile players are looking forward to providing you with some scary, rollercoaster-style fun. Demand for tickets has already been high so the Green Room has added another Friday to the production which now runs from Friday December 3rd to Saturday December 11th. Tickets can be purchased on Saturday mornings at the Green Room theatre between 10.30am and 12 noon or via the ticket hotline 01625 540933.
Photo: (L to R) Poopay (Sarah Field), Julian (Bob Stewart) and Ruella (Jane Newman).
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