by Alan Ayckbourn 
Performed at the Greenwich Playhouse March 2004

Galleon Theatre Company continued it's audacious, versatile and sell-out 2004 season, with the work of one of the world's most successful living playwrights - Alan Ayckbourn. In Absent Friends, Ayckbourn makes blackly-comic statements on the human condition and on its marital relationships.

The writing of Alan Ayckbourn, like no other contemporary playwright, perfectly fuses enlightenment with blazingly theatrical entertainment. Ayckbourn is a painstaking chronicler of human behaviour. He invites us to eavesdrop on his character's thoughts and their dysfunctional relationships; and then with delicate ingenuity and craftsmanship he moves us with the tragic undertones of their imperfect lives. In his plays he makes us laugh a great deal and by holding a mirror up to nature he shows us our own human foibles and flaws.

CREDITS

• Directed by Bruce Jamieson
• Produced by Alice de Sousa

THE CAST 

• Diana - Karen Admirral
• Evelyn - Carole Carpenter
• Marge - Fiona Terry
• Paul - Paul Hessey
• John - Adam Robert Brody 
• Colin - Kevin Marchant

THE CREATIVE TEAM

• Costume Design - Rachel Baynton
• Deputy Stage Manager - Elizabeth Buckeridge
• Scenery Design - Liam Daniel Shea
• Production Assistant - Karolyn Desbuquois
• Lighting Designer - Robert Gooch
• Make up Consultant - Cindy Hopkins
• Publicity Design - Alison Rayner
• Stills Photographer - Paul L.T. Welch 

REVIEWS

“Bruce Jamieson has won performances from the cast that succeed in combining parody with credibility. Satire today may be much bolder and more cruel compared with this era of Ayckbourn, but whether it catches the mundane despair of life is another matter.” - What’s On In London

“Directed at a cracking, heartless pace by Bruce Jamieson, the cast of six revel in the cringe worthiness of the parts they play and make us revel with them” - The Stage

“Continuing the impressive 2004 season at Greenwich Playhouse is a fine production of Alan Ayckbourn’s dark-humoured ‘Absent Friends’. Galleon’s production manages to tease it aimlessly into the 21st century - a combination of incisive writing, smart direction and imaginative interpretation by the talented cast. Instead of dated stereotypes, we have endearing, entertaining characters, with whom it’s all too easy to identify.” - Theatre World

“Blackly-comic statements leave the audience in fits of laughter.” - Kentish Times