Reviews

Sitting in the theatre next to a former psychiatric nurse, she was struck by how accurate the illnesses portrayed in the play were to real life. One “patient” in the drama was suffering from depression, another was bipolar, one suffered from an eating disorder, there is also drug addiction, pyromania, a patient afflicted by obsessive compulsive behaviour and another with a chronic shyness and social anxiety disorder. Any closer to home and my companion might have hopped onto the stage and completed a pill round. 

John Patrick Shanley’s 2004 play is set in 1964 in America, but it could have been set here or in the UK, or anywhere in Europe, because the ‘doubts’ it exposes about child abuse had been whispered about and covered up by families and churches and other institutions long before 1964.

Director Carla Moore suggests that the year is symbolic because it marks the introduction of the American Civil Rights Act and Vatican II’s more relaxed image of the Catholic Church – both symbolic of the fact that the 1960s was a time of political and social change.

Confusions by Alan Ayckbourn is a series of five interconnected one act plays. The plays are all loosely linked to the play before them by characters or location, and also through the shared themes of isolation, obsession and the human need for connection.

For what looks like being The Production Company’s second last show, they have mounted a sumptuous, all-stops-out Ragtime - a cast of thirty (including twelve ensemble), a twenty piece orchestra under Guy Noble, choreography by Dana Jolly, wonderful period (1900s east coast USA) costumes by Isaac Lummus - and a deceptively simple but clever stage design by Christina Smith.  The period and key, iconic locations (Ellis Island, Atlantic City boardwalk and beach, a mansion at New Rochelle) are established by original black and white photographs projected on a huge cyclorama.