Communicating Doors

By Alan Ayckbourn
Directed by Dale T. Facey

February 18, 19, 20, 26, 27
March 5, 6, 2010
8:00 PM

Reviewed by Donna Bailey-Thompson

Not much is missing from Communicating Doors although the kitchen sink comes to mind. The play is clever. Playwright Alan Ayckbour's description as “a cross between Back to the Future and Psycho,” only hints of its gamut-challenging ingredients. All the action takes place in the same hotel suite and begins in 2024. The opening scene suggests kinky sex is for hire and Reese, a wheezer-geezer, presents himself as a swinger. (In his dreams!) Allen Nott’s crotchety Reese is layered with enough senior stereotypical characteristics to inflame AARP members into an insulted frenzy – if they don’t die first from laughing.

The sex object, Poopay (Becky Rodia Schoenfeld) is curvy eye candy in a short leather dress, fishnet stockings, spike-heeled high-leather boots; her job description is Special Sexual Consultant. Stuffed in a large leather handbag are the tools of her trade – whips, handcuffs, and other perpetrators of questionable pleasure.

Sinister, creepy Julian (Christopher Berrien) who has been Reese’s business partner, had a side specialty: he off’d both of Reese’s wives, with Reese’s approval. But now that Reese is a wheeze away from meeting his maker, he wants the world to know his wives’ deaths were not accidental. He hires Poopay not for a bondage romp but to have her signature authenticate his statement. Before she signs, she scans the written evidence that is stuffed down the bidet deemed by Reese to be a safe hiding place because “no one ever uses it.”

So far, the same-old same old of sex, greed, murder. But when a terrified Poopay ducks into a cubicle which is the link to a connecting room (otherwise known as communicating doors), she returns to the same room only now it’s 20 years earlier (2004) and voila, she meets the alive and charming second wife, Ruella (Mary Fernandez-Sierra who is Ruella in total sync with her captivating character). In the same deferential tone she would ask a friend how to duplicate an especially tasty recipe, she asks Poopay, "What's it like being a prostitute? Is it fun?"

According to Reese’s document, this is the day Ruella is to be murdered. For her safety, she needs to return to the future but instead the time machine transports her further back, to 1984, where Reese is enjoying an energetic honeymoon with his first wife, Jessica (Rayah Martin).

The hotel's security manager, Harold (Brian Rucci) has a way of wandering in when shocking antics are kicking up the energy level and he's, well, he's shocked.

This madcap comedic farce does not slow down. The ongoing back and forth time travel compounds the excitement. When the villain unwittingly steps into the time machine and is about to burst into the suite where all three defenseless women are assembled, an audience member was so caught up in the suspense that she gasped, “Oh, no!” In the midst of nonsense, believability reigned, a testament to the playwright’s genius and the cast’s skill.

The set, designed by Konrad Rogowski, is gorgeous – butter cream walls and ivory woodwork, multi-level mahogany floors as well as carpeting, and a cutaway bathroom (bidet, commode, bathtub), a bedroom, and a sitting room with a balcony. No wonder Reese always stays in that suite. The director, Dale Facey resisted any impulse he may have had to significantly shorten the playing time; consequently, all the zany business is played out, some exaggerated situations trigger hysterical laughter.

Yes, this is a silly play – silly like a fox. The acting and costuming are first-rate. The Suffield Players’ reputation for presenting productions of high quality continues.

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 Coming in May, the delightful Enchanted April