If I Were You
By Alan Ayckbourne
Directed by Joe Harmston
At Richmond Theatre 31th May – 1st June
This is one of Alan Ayckbourne’s darker, more adult comedies. Liza Goddard returns to play Jill Rodale, a rather pathetic down trodden housewife, who has a drudge of a life keeping home to Mal Rodale, played by Jack Ellis. He himself is not much happier; he is manager of a furniture store and especially as he has very little people skills is dreading the visit of senior management. Every problem is met with aggression including sick secretaries, colleagues on paternity leave and troublesome customers. Home life is unfulfilling and he has a son, Sam, played by David Osmond, who is a great disappointment, he seems to like Shakespeare rather than football and we all know what that means! The only bright spark in Mal’s life is his daughter, Chrissie or Crystal, who worked hard at school, found her man got pregnant and married Dean Snaith played by Ayden Callaghan. Dean is Mal’s assistant and he covers for him when Mal visits Trixie, his lunch time floozy. All in all they are all happily miserable. But then there is the switch for Jill and Mel and they find out what it is like to be the other.

I did enjoy the performance from Liza Goddard and she was ably backed up by other members of the cast and it was a very delightful looking set and if I was a great lover of Alan Ayckbourne I probably would have thought that this was a good production. However I found the first act very slow with few if any laughs. Neither the writing nor the characters seemed to go deep enough for me. The mise-en-scène a mere pastiche of a sixties drama and now fifty years on, unfulfilling and the one object was to lead to the one joke, the body swap. There were lots of little nuggets that Ayckbourne had left littering the script, such as was Jill suicidal? Or was Dean beating up Chrissie? What sort of a teenager was Sam? The second act was much funnier and much more like what one would expect, the audience appreciated that with much more laughter, but even this act I found shallow with the one exception being the scene where Sam reads his lines to what he thinks is his Mum without realising that inside her body is now his Dad. This was superbly dramatic and Liza Goddard, playing his Dad starts to connect with his son and starts to realise that his Son is a fully rounded, interesting person and a credit to the family.

This play started life in about 2000 but was not written down till about January 2006, when it was title ‘I to I’. In February 2006 Alan Ayckbourne suffered a stroke and as part of his recovery worked on this piece re-titling it ‘If I Were You’. The body swap theme is one that he has used before in plays such as ‘Body Language’ and ‘The Jollies’, but these plays are not amongst the more notable of his 72 plays. He is at his best when writing very funny comedies with a slight twist, such as ‘Absurd Person Singular’ and The Norman Conquests’ trilogy and the recently revived ‘Bedroom Farce’. I must be one of the few people that did enjoy his musical ‘Jeeves’, but then I am no great lover of musicals! With over seventy plays some would have to be much deeper and ‘Woman in Mind’ is a very good play. The importance of entertaining the audience is always paramount in his work and so his plays are always going to be part of a good night out. It is no wonder, with that reputation, that his name always sells tickets. I am sure that if this was transfer to the West End it would prove to be a hit with the audiences.

Reviewed by Evan Rule