This is a black comedy of middle class manners minus the manners, in a set-up that strays increasingly into the terrain of farce
How is this for an apt bit of timing? In the week that children return to start a new school year, the Lyric opens its revival of Yasmina Reza’s short but decidedly not sweet 2008 chamber piece about the warring parents of two secondary school pupils. It’s a black comedy of middle class manners minus the manners, in a set-up that strays increasingly into the terrain of farce.
The first of Reza’s many deft touches comes with the issue of precisely who is on stage and who is not. 11-year-old Ferdinand has attacked his classmate Bruno with a stick, knocking out two of his teeth, but this pair are nowhere in sight. Instead it’s their parents – Annette and Alan for the former, Veronica and Michael of the latter – who are meeting to attempt to engineer a resolution.
The quartet are gathered in Veronica and Martin’s stylish living room, with its coffee-table art books and carefully arranged vases of tulips. Designer Lily Arnold’s clever playing space is a circular revolve, meaning that we can literally watch the unfolding chaos from all angles; a stage-circling light bar slowly descends in the background, providing the action with an ever more threatening atmosphere.
There are lots of laughs in Nicholai La Barrie’s production, which I saw on its final preview, but some awkward tonal shifts too, in the acting as well as between varying sections of the script. Agyeman’s performance is commendably lively and big on energy, but is undermined by a series of oddly over-emphatic arm and hand gestures.
Danmark Seneste Nyt, Danmark Overskrifter
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